Preamble

The House met at half-past Two o'clock

PRAYERS

[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]

Oral Answers to Questions — EDUCATION

Libraries (Public Lending Right)

Mr. Iremonger: asked the Minister of Education what consultations he has had with interested bodies, following his consideration of the proposal submitted to him by the Authors' Society for a public lending right, about methods of providing for the remuneration of authors and publishers for books supplied to public and lending libraries.

The Minister of Education (Sir David Eccles): I advised the promoters to discuss their proposals with the local authority associations and other library interests, and I also asked those bodies to take part in these discussions.

St. John's School, Lewisham

Mr. C. Johnson: asked the Minister of Education whether he has considered the petition sent to him and signed by 2,736 inhabitants of Lewisham and other places for the rebuilding of St. John's School, Lewisham; and if he is now prepared to give his consent to the inclusion of this school in the London County Council school rebuilding programme.

Sir D. Eccles: Yes, Sir. I have approved the rebuilding of this school as one of several projects to complete the London County Council's building programme for 1962–63.

Mr. Johnson: May I thank the Minister for that reply and say with what satisfaction it will be greeted by the inhabitants of my constituency who wish to continue to send their children to this very important school?

Machine Tools (Design)

Mr. Albu: asked the Minister of Education what steps he proposes to take to encourage research and teaching in the design of machine tools in colleges for which he has financial responsibility, in accordance with the recommendations of the Mitchell Committee.

Sir D. Eccles: Officers of my Department are meeting representatives of the machine tool industry on this subject tomorrow.

Mr. Albu: When the right hon. Gentleman does so, will he consider asking the representatives of the industry whether they would be prepared to support financially—in other words, to found—departments of machine tool design in some of the colleges of technology?

Sir D. Eccles: There are three colleges already, Birmingham, Loughborough and Salford, which have courses that have a bias toward the machine tool industry. I will bear the hon. Gentleman's point in mind.

Mr. Willey: Will the right hon. Gentleman confirm that the Melman Report will be published and that there is no need for us to learn Italian?

Sir D. Eccles: I shall need notice of that supplementary question.

Scottish Certificate of Education (Modern Studies Course)

Mr. G. M. Thomson: asked the Minister of Education whether his attention has been drawn to the syllabus and specimen question paper for the Ordinary Grade, Modern Studies Course, for the Scottish Certificate of Education; and whether he will take steps to bring this to the attention of the relevant authorities in England and Wales.

Sir D. Eccles: I have seen these papers and I am sure that the examining bodies and schools will be interested in this proposal, but I doubt whether this particular syllabus would fit the rather different circumstances of schools in England and Wales.

Mr. Thomson: While not dissenting from the Minister's last comment, may I ask whether he would agree that this is rather a notable attempt to make


Scottish secondary school children aware that they are citizens of a shrinking world, and will he take steps to encourage English schools to do something on similar lines?

Sir D. Eccles: I am a little doubtful whether modern studies ought to replace history and geography. I believe that that is one of the ideas.

U.N.E.S.C.O. (United Kingdom Commission)

Mr. G. M. Thomson: asked the Minister of Education when he expects to have completed the reformation of the United Kingdom Commission to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation; and whether he will make a statement.

Sir D. Eccles: The new national Commission was constituted in time to allow its members to meet the members of the Executive Board of U.N.E.S.C.O. when the latter visited the United Kingdom as guests of the Government in May. The first formal meeting was on 4th October.
A number of advisory committees have been set up and most of them held meetings before the start of the present session of the General Conference of U.N.E.S.C.O.

Mr. Thomson: Is the Minister aware that there will be a good deal of support for his efforts at Paris to make U.N.E.S.C.O. a more effective international body and, in particular, for his idea that 10 per cent. of international aid should be earmarked for educational development? Is the right hon. Gentleman also aware that there is a good deal of concern at the fact that the national Commission in this country is not a very active body, and will he match his efforts overseas by endeavouring to get the national Commission to be similarly vigorous in this country?

Sir D. Eccles: I shall need all the support that I can get to make U.N.E.S.C.O. an efficient body, and I will try to give the United Kingdom Commission a larger share in future.

Further Education (Commercial Subjects)

Mr. Holland: asked the Minister of Education what proposals he has for

expanding and improving the facilities for further education in commercial subjects.

Sir D. Eccles: The proposals contained in the McMeeking Report on Further Education for Commerce which was published last year have been actively followed up by my department. I am sending my hon. Friend the circulars issued on this important branch of further education.

Mr. Holland: While thanking my right hon. Friend for that reply—and I look forward to receiving the fuller details—may I ask him whether he is aware of the gap that seems to exist for generally recognised qualifications, between certificates of competence in clerical jobs and stenography, on the one hand, and membership of the highly specialised professional institutes, on the other? Would he consider the establishment of a generally recognised advanced-level course and qualification in commerce similar to the diploma of technology on the technical side?

Sir D. Eccles: That point is under consideration at the moment.

Teachers (Specialist Training)

Mr. Boyden: asked the Minister of Education how many, and what percentage, of teachers in special schools at the beginning of the autumn term had received appropriate specialist training; how these figures compare with the beginning of the autumn term 1959; and how many certificated teachers are now attending full-time specialist training courses.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Education (Mr. Kenneth Thompson): As the Answer contains a number of figures, I will circulate it in the OFFICIAL REPORT.

Mr. Boyden: Is the Parliamentary Secretary aware that it is precisely in those areas of general shortage of teachers that there is a shortage of specialist teachers? What steps is he taking to persuade the local authorities there to release them for extra training? What steps is he taking to overcome the general shortage?

Mr. Thompson: There are 248 teachers attending full-time specialist training


courses. We propose to increase this number and to make more places available in the years immediately ahead.

Following are the figures:

1. In January, 1960—the latest date for which figures are available—special qualifications were held by 505 or 81 per cent. of full time teachers in Special Schools for the deaf and 102 or 55 per cent. in schools for the blind and blind and partially sighted. The figures for the previous year were 517 or 83 per cent. and 96 or 54 per cent.
2. These are the only special schools in which a special qualification for permanent approval as a teacher is required.
3. No figures are available for other special schools.
4. The answer to the last part of the Question is 248.

Special Schools (Physiotherapy Staff)

Mr. Boyden: asked the Minister of Education how many special schools are without trained physiotherapy staff.

Mr. K. Thompson: Twenty-eight of the 131 boarding and day special schools which provide for physically handicapped children were without trained physiotherapy staff in November, 1959, when a special survey was made. In 24 of these, mainly day schools, children needing treatment received it at local hospitals or clinics and two schools had facilities for providing treatment, but were temporarily without staff.

Mr. Boyden: In view of the general shortage in the hospital service as well, what steps is the hon. Gentleman taking in consultation with his right hon. Friend to improve the general supply of this type of trained staff?

Mr. Thompson: The supply of physiotherapists is a matter for my right hon. Friend the Minister of Health, and I know that he has this shortage under consideration.

Technical Education

Mrs. White: asked the Minister of Education if he will make a statement on the proposed reorganisation of technical education.

Sir D. Eccles: I hope to publish my proposals as a White Paper early in January.

Mrs. White: While we look forward to the White Paper with interest, may

I ask whether the right hon. Gentleman is aware that he promised this before Christmas. Will the White Paper cover compulsory day release for those who require it?

Sir D. Eccles: No, the White Paper will not cover that subject.

Mrs. White: Has the right hon. Gentleman any further statement to make on that subject?

Sir D. Eccles: The conversations are proceeding, and they are bound to be very lengthy.

Over-size Classes, Essex

Mr. Sorensen: asked the Minister of Education to what extent classes of excessive size in the administrative county of Essex have increased or decreased in number during the past twelve months; what is the prospect during the ensuing two years; of what type of teacher there is a shortage; and if the number of part or whole time or nominally retired teachers is increasing.

Sir D. Eccles: During 1959 the number of over-size classes increased by 1·5 per cent. I expect a small improvement this year and next. The authority is short of teachers of physical education, house-craft and handicraft, of mathematics and science teachers in modern schools, and of teachers in infants schools. The number of full-time and part-time teachers is steadily increasing but the number of teachers over 60 has declined since 1957.

Mr. Sorensen: Is the Minister aware that many classes in schools in Essex are excessive in size and that it is feared that the classes will be even larger next year? Under these circumstances, what is being especially done to try to cope with this situation?

Sir D. Eccles: I am aware of the difficulties in Essex, where the school population has increased so fast. We are attempting to help through the quota system for teachers and also by training more teachers and trying to get married women to return to schools.

Mr. Ridsdale: Is the Minister aware of the present lack of incentives to retired teachers, especially those who retired some years ago? Will he take steps to encourage those over 60 by providing better incentives than those at present given to retired teachers?

Sir D. Eccles: The financial arrangements for retired teachers are on all-fours with the rest of the Civil Service.

Denominational Schools

Mr. Sorensen: asked the Minister of Education how many new or reconstructed denominational schools have been opened during the past year; for what denominations; how many agreed plans for each denomination provide for new or reconstructed schools during the next five years; and if the financial arrangements in respect of those schools are working satisfactorily.

Sir D. Eccles: The answer to the first and second parts of the Question is 66, of which 52 are Roman Catholic, 9 Church of England and 5 of other denominations. The building programmes for the three years 1960–63, which are the latest so far settled, contain 406 voluntary schools of which 290 are Roman Catholic, 106 Church of England and 10 of other denominations. The financial arrangements introduced by the Education Act, 1959, are working satisfactorily.

Mr. Sorensen: What does the Minister mean by "other denominations"? Will he specify them and indicate whether some of the smaller denominations are now being stimulated into building schools which otherwise would not have been built? Is there any sign of an increasing demand that public money granted for this purpose shall amount to 100 per cent.?

Sir D. Eccles: I am always anxious that the other denominations should get their share. I think that it is fair to say that the present grant arrangements are working satisfactorily.

Mr. Sorensen: What are the other denominations?

Swimming

Mr. Hector Hughes: asked the Minister of Education if, in view of the large number of deaths from drowning in Great Britain due to inability to swim and in order to encourage children attending schools under his jurisdiction to learn to swim, he will institute a prize or certificate to be awarded to such of those children as can pass a swimming test.

Sir D. Eccles: No, Sir. There is an excellent scheme of tests and certificates organised by the Royal Life Saving Society. I think it is better to rely on this.

Mr. Hughes: Has not the right hon. Gentleman realised that the scheme is not sufficiently "excellent", as he calls it, to reduce the number of deaths? He has done nothing of a concrete character during the last few years to encourage it. Will not he reconsider my suggestion to provide a certificate to encourage children to learn to swim?

Sir D. Eccles: I am not sure that that is fair on the Royal Life Saving Society, which awarded 127,000 certificates of proficiency last year. Many local authorities pay the Society's examination fees for children in their schools, which I think is a good thing.

Junior School, Barking

Mr. Driberg: asked the Minister of Education if he is aware that the provision of a junior school for the Thames View Estate, Barking, has been recommended repeatedly by the local education authority, and that, for the want of this school a large number of children from this estate must daily cross a dangerous by-pass road to attend schools at considerable distances from their homes; and why, in view of his statement in 1959 that this project had a strong claim for inclusion in the 1962–63 school building programme, it has now been excluded from that programme.

Sir D. Eccles: Yes, Sir. As the hon. Member knows, measures have been taken to meet the traffic dangers. I could not include the new school in the 1962–63 building programme because of the more pressing needs of other areas.

Mr. Driberg: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the road danger is not the only reason for thinking that this school has a strong claim for inclusion in that programme? Another main factor in the argument is that the apparent surplus accommodation in other schools, on which I think the Minister relies to some extent, may also be temporary.

Sir D. Eccles: I will look at the situation again, but it was very carefully considered when the programme was made up.

Youth Leaders (Training College)

Mr. Coulson: asked the Minister of Education what progress has been made with the establishment of a national college for the training of youth leaders.

Sir D. Eccles: A college has been established at Leicester and will open on 30th January. Ninety places, for men and women students, are available on the first course. There have been 240 applications so far, and 57 of the first 130 candidates interviewed have been accepted.

Mr. Coulson: Is my right hon. Friend aware that his Answer will be received with great interest by all those concerned with the future of the Youth Service? He is to be congratulated on the progress made.

Mrs. White: Can the Minister let us know what salary arrangements will be made for people who undergo training at this college? Is there a national scale which will apply to them?

Sir D. Eccles: We have spent many months trying to get a salary arrangement for youth leaders and I hope that we are now coming somewhere near it. It has been a most extraordinarily difficult negotiation.

Schools (Reorganisation)

Mr. Hayman: asked the Minister of Education when he expects the reorganisation of schools to be completed.

Sir D. Eccles: The last of the necessary building work will be included in the 1964–65 programme. As a result, it should be possible to complete reorganisation by September, 1967.

Mr. Hayman: Can the Minister indicate just how that will affect the Cornish programme of replacement, about which he has had so many Questions recently?

Sir D. Eccles: I am afraid that I could not, without very considerable investigation.

Training Colleges

Mr. Hornby: asked the Minister of Education to what extent he has achieved his aim of providing new day training

colleges in the most heavily populated areas.

Sir D. Eccles: There were 17,303, compared with 16,417. This is a record entry, for which the colleges deserve our thanks.

Mr. Hornby: Can my right hon. Friend yet say whether he thinks the establishment of these day colleges—

Hon. Members: Wrong Question.

Mr. Hornby: —is producing any entrants to the teaching profession who would not have come in without the establishment of these colleges?

Sir D. Eccles: I think that that is so, because the day colleges take people who are home-based, and who, perhaps, could not get training unless there was somewhere to do it within range of where they live.

Mr. Hornby: asked the Minister of Education how many students were admitted for courses of initial training in all kinds of teacher training colleges this autumn compared with the year before.

Sir D. Eccles: Five day colleges, including new ones at Swinton in the West Riding, Chorley in Lancashire, and Brentwood in Essex, will be in service by January, 1961.

Mr. Chetwynd: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Have we not got these two Answers the wrong way round? The Minister answered Question No. 19 by replying to Question No. 20, and now the process is being reversed.

Mr. Speaker: Then we shall get two Questions answered at once, which will be splendid.

Sir D. Eccles: I apologise. May I, Mr. Speaker, with your permission, be allowed to complete the Answer that I had intended for No. 19—at this season of the year it has gone wrong. There are three other new day colleges—in London, Wolverhampton and Newcastle—planned to open in September, 1961.

Mr. Chetwynd: Perhaps I may be allowed to ask a supplementary question to Question No. 19. Can the right hon. Gentleman say how many students applied this year for entrance to training colleges but could not get places?

Sir D. Eccles: No, not without notice.

Oral Answers to Questions — SCIENTIFIC AND INDUSTRIAL RESEARCH

Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering

Mr. Albu: asked the Minister of Education, as representing the Minister for Science, how many meetings have been held between the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research and the Shipbuilding Conference to discuss the findings of the Department's report on shipbuilding and marine engineering; and whether he will make a statement on the outcome.

Sir D. Eccles: I would refer the hon. Member to the reply which I gave to the hon. Member for Sunderland, South (Mr. P. Williams) on 1st December. The decision to publish the report was taken at the seventh meeting between the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research and the Shipbuilding Conference.

Mr. Albu: Can the right hon. Gentleman assure the House that the report when published will not be an emasculated version? Can he say also what further steps and discussions are taking place with a view to improving the industry's facilities for research, particularly in marine engineering?

Sir D. Eccles: The report, when published, will be the only report. It will be the report that the meetings between the D.S.I.R. and the Shipbuilding Conference have agreed upon. On the second part of the hon. Gentleman's supplementary question, I will consult my noble Friend.

Mr. Albu: Does that mean that the report is not the original report as made by D.S.I.R.?

Sir D. Eccles: There never has been an original report. There has been only a draft which has been discussed.

Mr. Willey: Will the draft be published?

Sir D. Eccles: The completed report will come out, as is normal in these matters, after discussion of various drafts.

Oral Answers to Questions — NORTHERN RHODESIA

Constitution

Mr. Stonehouse: asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies if he will give details of the constitutional discussions

regarding the future of Northern Rhodesia; and when he expects to introduce proposals for a new constitution for the Territory.

The Secretary of State for the Colonies (Mr. Iain Macleod): The Northern Rhodesia territorial constitutional conference will open in London on Tuesday of next week. I cannot, of course, forecast what the results of the conference will be.

Mr. Stonehouse: While complimenting the Colonial Secretary on arranging the Northern Rhodesian conference concurrently with the Federal review, may I ask him whether he will be applying the same principles to Northern Rhodesia as he applied to Nyasaland?

Mr. Macleod: I think that it would be unwise to give any such assurance. No sensible man ever shows his cards, before the game starts, to the other people playing.

Housing Segregation

Mr. Fisher: asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies to what extent housing segregation on racial lines still exists in Northern Rhodesia; and to what extent it is Government policy to eliminate this as soon as possible.

Mr. Iain Macleod: There is no law to compel members of different races to live in separate areas. Housing segregation on racial lines exists only to the extent that local authorities are required by law to provide housing areas for the benefit of Africans employed within their boundaries.

Mr. Fisher: Will my right hon. Friend recognise that in certain areas in Northern Rhodesia—and, certainly, in the Copperbelt—there is, in fact if not in law, a good deal of housing segregation on racial lines? Will he do his best to get this broken down, particularly for the emergent middle-class type of African who could afford to buy a better house in a better area if he were allowed to do so?

Mr. Macleod: Northern Rhodesia has recently made splendid strides in these matters, as I am sure the House will recognise. The explanation of the first part of my hon. Friend's supplementary question may well be that many of the


largest employers of labour in Africa including, in this particular case, the mining companies do provide housing for Africans.

Mr. G. M. Thomson: Would it not assist the right hon. Gentleman in his endeavours if he were to democratise local authorities a good deal more in Northern Rhodesia?

Mr. Fisher: Hear, hear.

Oral Answers to Questions — BAHAMAS

Territorial Waters (United States Survey)

Mr. Brockway: asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies why permission has been given to the United States Navy to survey the territorial waters of the Bahamas with a view to establishing an undersea rocket-testing centre; and if the Government and Legislature of the Bahamas were consulted.

Mr. Iain Macleod: I see no reason why permission for a survey, carrying no commitment to allow the establishment of an operational facility, should have been withheld. The Governor of the Bahamas was consulted before permission was given. There will, of course, be further consultation with the Bahamas should any more positive proposals be put forward as a result of the survey.

Mr. Brockway: Does the Colonial Secretary seriously put forward the view that, with these great issues involved, a survey should be carried out without any discussion with the Government of the Bahamas or with its Legislature? Would he not follow the much better precedent he pursued in the case of the West Indies of having negotiations between America and the representatives of those Governments?

Mr. Macleod: I am sure that the hon. Gentleman knows that the two cases are not parallel in the least. The answer to the first part of his supplementary question is, "Yes, I do think it appropriate in this case." Naturally, if a firm application were put forward later for a plan, for which I should require considerable details, then, of course, the Executive Council and the Government would be closely consulted.

Oral Answers to Questions — SARAWAK

Schools (English)

Mr. Turner: asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether he proposes to make English a compulsory subject at all schools in Sarawak.

Mr. Iain Macleod: No, Sir. English is already taught as a subject in all schools in Sarawak.

Oral Answers to Questions — COLONIAL TERRITORIES

Colonial Development Corporation

Mr. Leather: asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies if he will now make a statement regarding the report of the Sinclair Committee on the future of the Colonial Development Corporation.

Mrs. White: asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies when he intends to publish the Government's proposals for dealing with the financial structure of the Colonial Development Corporation.

Mr. Iain Macleod: I shall make a statement as soon as I can. For the moment, I cannot add to what I said in reply to the Question by the hon. Member for Dundee, East (Mr. G. M. Thomson) on 8th November; that is, that I am in close consultation with the Corporation on the complicated issues involved.

Mr. Leather: Whatever the outcome may be of these very long-drawn-out and complex talks, will my right hon. Friend give us an assurance that he will not allow the Treasury to hamstring the C.D.C.? Would he reaffirm that it is still his view that C.D.C. is the Government's primary agency for this important work, and that he will give the fullest possible support to the very experienced and successful management and staff of the Corporation?

Mr. Macleod: I can certainly give those assurances, but I should also like to add that my hon. Friend must not assume that the Treasury is being difficult in this case. That, of course, is a popular assumption which may sometimes be true. It is not true in this case.

Mrs. White: Do the Government accept the important recommendations


of the Sinclair Report, or is it true to assume that these long-drawn-out discussions are because the Government's proposals were so inadequate that the Corporation could not possibly be expected to accept them?

Mr. Macleod: No. With respect, that is not the situation. It is a very complicated story, and if the hon. Lady would like to talk about it with me, I will give her as much background as I can. We had almost reached finality in our discussions when new proposals were put forward by the Corporation itself.

Parliamentary Questions (Cost)

Mr. Fisher: asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies if he will indicate the approximate average cost of Parliamentary Questions to the Colonial Office which have to be referred to Colonial Territories for answer; and what is the average extra cost when they are placed on the Order Paper at short notice.

Mr. Iain Macleod: It would be impracticable to attempt to estimate the cost, in terms of staff time, of preparing an Answer to a Parliamentary Question. Referring Questions to overseas Governments costs 2s. 6d. if time permits the use of airmail. When such Questions are placed on the Order Paper at short notice, the extra cost to the Colonial Office and the overseas Government arising from telegraphic communication is from £10 to £100.

Mr. Fisher: Does not the very large discrepancy involved indicate the desirability, wherever it is possible so to do, of hon. Members putting down their Questions to the Table Office in very good time so as to avoid using the very expensive telegraphic service?

Mr. Macleod: Of course, if the House is seized with a passion for economy in this matter, hon. Members need not put down any Questions at all.

Mr. S. Silverman: Will the right hon. Gentleman add to the information he has given by telling us what was the cost of answering this Question and how much would have been saved if it had been put down for Written Answer instead of Oral Answer?

Mr. Macleod: I imagine that the only cost involved in answering this Question

is that of staff time in the Colonial Office in doing the exercise, and, as I said, that cannot be calculated.

Oral Answers to Questions — EAST AFRICA

Executive Councils, Kenya and Uganda

Mr. Brockway: asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies if the leaders of the majority parties represented in the Executive Councils of the new Legislatures of Kenya and Uganda will be given the status of chief ministers.

Mr. Iain Macleod: There is no provision in the new constitutions for Kenya and Uganda for the appointment of a Chief Minister. I cannot at present say when this further step will be taken.

Mr. Brockway: Does the right hon. Gentleman recognise—I am sure that he does—that the very important principle is involved here of the advance of these countries to the status of responsible Government? In view of the proposal of Mr. Julius Nyerere in Tanganyika that the solution for the Central African Federation would be to extend it to East Africa as soon as responsible Government is given, is it not desirable that early steps should be taken in that direction?

Mr. Macleod: The hon. Member is quite right in saying that this question has a relevance to the proposals of Mr. Nyerere, which, of course, interest the whole House, and have aroused widespread interest in East Africa, but in my view one cannot anticipate the results of these two elections. I do not even know, for example, whether there will be a majority party, which the hon. Gentleman assumes in his Question. I think that much the best thing for both Kenya and Uganda is to get on with the election, and then we can study the results when we know them.

Oral Answers to Questions — MALTA

Fishing Industry

Mr. Awbery: asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies (1) if he is aware of the deteriorating position of the fishing industry in Malta; when the 1955 report of Mr. Tom Burdon on the revival of this industry


will be implemented; and if he will make a statement;
(2) how many loans and how many grants were made to fishermen under the Agriculture and Fisheries (Malta) Act, 1956; and how many vessels obtained a grant out of the Estimates made for this purpose during 1959–60 and 1960–61.

Mr. Iain Macleod: Most of the main recommendations of the Burdon Report have been implemented and the industry has expanded. Five trawlers have been acquired with loan assistance and two with grant assistance under Maltese legislation, all prior to 1959–60.

Mr. Awbery: Is the Colonial Secretary aware that my information is that the position of the fishing industry in Malta is very serious indeed, and calls for urgent attention and assistance, from this Government? Is he further aware that in 1955 Mr. Tom Burdon made a report recommending the building of twelve trawlers; that out of the twelve trawlers then recommended only seven—six large ones and one small—have been built—and that fishermen have now gone out of business and are selling their trawlers? Will he do something to assist the industry before its position gets any worse?

Mr. Macleod: My information about the deterioration of the industry does not agree with the hon. Gentleman's, but I know that he is well-informed in these matters, and I will look into what he says in the light of his Question. Perhaps I can add that my fisheries adviser is going to Malta next month to advise on those points.

Oral Answers to Questions — UGANDA

Legislative Council (Buganda Representation)

Mr. Goodhart: asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies what plans there are for representation of the people of Buganda in the Central Legislative Council of Uganda after the forthcoming general election in Uganda, in view of the very small registration of electors in Buganda.

Mr. Iain Macleod: The representation of Buganda has already been provided for in the arrangements for Protectorate-wide elections to be held next March.

Although the number of electors who have registered in Buganda is small in comparison with those who have registered elsewhere, I nevertheless hope that this will not materially prejudice the quality of Buganda's representation in the new Legislature.

Mr. Goodhart: Do we seriously intend to go ahead with these elections in Buganda if there is no improvement in the number of registrations, or will we admit that in this particular trial of strength the Kabaka's Government have won?

Mr. Macleod: The answer to whether we will go ahead with elections is beyond question, "Yes". I am sure that my hon. Friend will recognise that the one thing that the rest of the Protectorate is very much afraid of indeed is that we will not go ahead with the elections throughout the Protectorate. I am certain that it would be right to do so. I have done everything I can through the Relations Commission, the chairman of which is at present in Uganda, to allay the anxieties of the Baganda in this matter.

Mr. Stonehouse: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that his policy in Uganda is extremely wise in present circumstances and that it is in the best interests of all the Uganda people that Buganda should not become a separate independent State as intended on 1st January? Will he confirm that a central and democratic Legislative Council will be created?

Mr. Macleod: I hope that both sides of the House will realise that there are, as it were, two barrels to my policy. The first is that there should be Protectorate-wide elections. It is a very difficult policy, but I believe that it is right, in spite of the situation in Buganda. Secondly, I believe that, through the medium of the Relationships Commission, we should try to do what we can to meet the anxieties of those in Buganda and the other Agreement Districts throughout the Protectorate.

Sir P. Agnew: Is my right hon. Friend aware that the refraining of the vast majority of the Baganda from registering for these elections is due to a deep-seated fear of a possible injustice by Her Majesty's Government as a result of their


handing over power to a central Legislature which might have power over the very structure of the Buganda Kingdom itself?

Mr. Macleod: With respect, I am not sure that that is right. If it were, surely by far the best course for the Baganda to take is, as they could do, to use their full power through the ballot box in the Legislative Council for the whole Protectorate.

Viscount Hinchingbrooke: Is the Relationships Commission empowered to report adversely about the holding of elections in March if the chairman and other members of it discover on their rounds in Uganda that that would be the wisest course?

Mr. Macleod: I suppose that that is not strictly within their terms of reference, but if the chairman wished to make representations to me on those matters, of course I would consider them.

Oral Answers to Questions — KENYA

Mr. Jomo Kenyatta

Mr. Stonehouse: asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies if he will give an assurance that Mr. Jomo Kenyatta will be released in Kenya.

Mr. Fell: asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies if he will give an assurance that Jomo Kenyatta will not be released in Kenya.

Mr. Iain Macleod: No, Sir.

Mr. Stonehouse: Before I ask my supplementary question, Mr. Speaker, will the Colonial Secretary say which was the Question to which he replied "No"?

Mr. Macleod: The hon. Gentleman is not at his brightest today. He asked me for an assurance, and my hon. Friend the Member for Yarmouth (Mr. Fell) asked for an assurance in precisely the contrary sense. I am not prepared to give either assurance.

Mr. Stonehouse: I thank the Colonial Secretary for that clarity. Is he aware that he is flying in the face of reality in this matter, and that there is an overwhelming mass of people in Kenya who want Mr. Kenyatta to be released and they will express their will after the elections in March?

Would it not be better if Mr. Kenyatta were released and allowed to return to political life before the elections?

Mr. Macleod: If I may say so, I do not agree with that analysis. It is easy to find people who take different points of view on this question in every single race in Kenya. I am certain that we should leave it, as we have done in the past, to the decision of the Governor, although, naturally, in a matter of this importance the Governor would not act without the full accord and support of Her Majesty's Government.

Oral Answers to Questions — AGRICULTURE, FISHERIES AND FOOD

British Trawlers, Cape Farvel (Incident)

Mr. Hector Hughes: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he will give details of the incident off Cape Farvel, Greenland, in October of this year, when British trawlers were fired on by foreign forces.

The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Mr. W. M. F. Vane): After making careful inquiries, my right hon. Friend has been unable to obtain confirmation of the incident to which the hon. and learned Member refers.

Mr. Hughes: Will the hon. Gentleman agree that it is time that incidents of this kind were avoided by settling the economic grievances out of which they arise, with consequent saving of time, money and energy by Her Majesty's Government?

Mr. Vane: Naturally, one does not like grievances to persist, but I do not think that that arises out of the hon. and learned Member's Question.

Charollais Bulls (Terrington Report)

Sir J. Barlow: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food whether he has now decided to allow the importation of Charollais bulls into this country.

Mr. Bullard: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if


he will now state what action he proposes to take on the Terrington Report.

Mr. Bossom: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he can now make a statement regarding the importation into the United Kingdom of Charollais bulls, in the light of the serious outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease.

The Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Mr. Christopher Soames): The Secretary of State for Scotland and I have carefully considered the Committee's Report and have taken into account the views of all the organisations concerned. We agree with the Committee that there is a good case for a trial of some Charollais bulls imported under the strictest veterinary control.
The Secretary of State and I are satisfied from the expert advice available to us that with the extremely strict precautions which would be taken there could be no risk of introducing disease into this country. We have had, however, to take into account the possible effect upon the international livestock trade if the proposed importation of Charollais from France were proceeded with at this juncture.
While, therefore, we accept in principle the desirability of trying the Charollais experiment at a convenient opportunity, we are not proposing to proceed with the importation for the time being. In the meantime, we shall do all we can to demonstrate that no risk is involved in our experiment to justify any restrictions on our exports.
We are very much indebted to Lord Terrington and his Committee for the careful thought which they gave to this subject and for their very helpful Report.

Sir J. Barlow: Is my right hon. Friend aware that that Answer will be received with great appreciation by progressive cattle breeders in this country? Knowing the care which my right hon. Friend's Ministry takes to prevent the importation of disease, may I ask whether he can indicate when he hopes to be able to implement his decision?

Mr. Soames: It involves consultation with other countries and I should not like to say at the moment.

Mr. Bullard: Does my right hon. Friend realise that his determination not

to turn down this project will be received with great relief by commercial beef producers? Is he aware that there will be ready acceptance of the fact that to introduce cattle into the country at the present time, with foot-and-mouth disease as it is, would be a grave risk? Will my right hon. Friend, however, do something about this matter at the earliest possible opportunity consistent with removing the disease risk?

Mr. Soames: Yes, Sir. I am anxious to get on with this experiment as soon as we can overcome the difficulties which I have mentioned.

Mr. Bossom: To ensure better Government control, can my right hon. Friend say that when the Charollais bulls come over, the trials will be carried out at Government experimental farms?

Mr. Soames: We have a long way to go in the experimentation in progeny trials with beef animals and I am anxious that more should be done. If breed societies or others have any proposals, I will gladly look at them to see in what way we can assist. The facilities available to my Department in this respect are, however, strictly limited.

Mr. Mackie: Is the Minister aware that this decision will give great satisfaction to progressive farmers, particularly dairy farmers, but that there will be disappointment at the delay and that I hope he will ensure that it is as short as possible? How does the Minister propose to choose the bulls? I hope he knows that the British Charollais Bulls Committee, of which the hon. Member for Enfield, East happens to be chairman, is at his service.

Mr. Soames: Yes, Sir. If we can reach the decision that we can go forward with this importation, we would choose them from the spring calvings.

Oregon Blue Tag Perennial Ryegrass

Mr. Stodart: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what representations he has received in favour of importing stocks of certified Oregon Blue Tag perennial ryegrass; and if he proposes to authorise limited imports of this seed.

Mr. Vane: My right hon. Friend has received no representations from organisations representing seeds interests, but


my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland has received a request from the trade organisation in Scotland. Representations have also been received from some seed merchants. After considering the supply position, it has been decided not to authorise imports of this seed.

Mr. Stodart: Would not my hon. Friend agree that there appears to be a certain amount of inconsistency of policy in this matter in that a commodity which is in extremely short supply and, therefore, extremely expensive, is not being allowed in, whereas at a time when the markets are glutted with barley, large imports of barley are allowed in?

Mr. Vane: I do not think there is any inconsistency. There is no evidence that supplies from normal sources will not be sufficient for our needs. There is conflicting evidence about the suitability of this Oregon seed for use in our climatic conditions.

Argentine (Foot-and-Mouth Disease)

Sir A. Hurd: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he is satisfied that the further measures announced by the Argentine Secretary of Agriculture to confine foot-and-mouth disease in Argentina will reduce the risk of infection being brought here in meat from Argentina; and if he proposes to have further consultations with the Argentine authorities to ensure that everything possible is done to minimise this risk.

Mr. Soames: I hope the new measures will have a good effect, but we can only wait and see. My officers stationed in the Argentine are in close touch with the authorities there, who are well aware of our views.

Sir A. Hurd: Can my right hon. Friend tell us a little more about the probable effect of the measures to be taken by the Argentine authorities? Do we understand that compulsory vaccination is to be introduced over a wide area of the Argentine, including particularly stock moving into the meat works that ultimately may come here?

Mr. Soames: A decree has been passed into law enabling regulations to be made for compulsory vaccination, and I understand that a start is likely to be made shortly.

Oral Answers to Questions — CHINA

Mr. Wyatt: asked the Prime Minister whether he will invite the Prime Minister of the People's Republic of China to London in order that he may have discussions with him about membership of the United Nations.

The Prime Minister (Mr. Harold Macmillan): No, Sir. I do not consider that such an invitation would be useful at the present time.

Mr. Wyatt: How does the right hon. Gentleman distinguish between inviting Mr. Khrushchev and the Russian leaders and inviting the Chinese leaders to London? How will Mr. Khrushchev be able to persuade the Chinese that war is not inevitable, and how can we expect any disarmament negotiations to succeed, while we in the West continue to insult the Chinese? Should not the Prime Minister now take the initiative? Is he aware that in this matter, as in others, even his hon. Friends are now worried about his growing subservience to America?

The Prime Minister: I do not think that it is insulting to a man not to invite him. I have had a little experience in this and I have taken some initiatives. I regard the question of timing as all-important in issues of this character.

Mr. Gaitskell: Is the Prime Minister aware that the Prime Minister of Canada, in a notable speech, recently called for a review of Western policies towards China and for recognition of the importance of bringing that country into any political settlement? In the circumstances, will not the Prime Minister agree that it is enormously important to break through the wall which separates us in the West as a whole from China and make some progress in this direction?

The Prime Minister: The reply to the first part of the right hon. Gentleman's supplementary—

Mr. Speaker: Order. I was about to point out—I think the Prime Minister was saying the same thing—that the first part of the right hon. Member's supplementary question anticipates Question No. 49. The rest of it is a different question.

The Prime Minister: The first part arises on Question No. 49. On the second part, I repeat—I think the right hon. Gentleman will, on consideration, agree—that it is very much a matter of timing.

Mr. Gaitskell: Can the Prime Minister at least say whether, when he meets the new President of the United States, he will take up with him as one of the major points to be discussed the attitude of the West towards China?

The Prime Minister: That anticipates another Question on the Order Paper.

Mr. Wyatt: Can the Prime Minister say more about this matter of timing? His Government have now been in office for nearly ten years and nothing has yet been done. Will it be done within the next ten years?

The Prime Minister: If the hon. Member, with his large knowledge of these matters, feels that I have failed to make any contribution to foreign affairs in trying to alleviate the position between West and East, he is, of course, entitled to take that view. I must be judged by my fellow-countrymen as a whole.

Mr. C. Osborne: Will my right hon. Friend bear in mind that it would be most unwise to invite Mr. Chou En-lai to London until negotiations have taken place, so that he has something to go back to China with? It would be very unwise to invite him here and to send him back empty-handed.

The Prime Minister: I hope that my hon. Friend will not anticipate his own Question.

Mr. Gaitskell: Can the right hon. Gentleman say in which Question there is any reference to his talking to Senator Kennedy about relations with China?

The Prime Minister: I think that there is a Question about my meeting him.

Mr. Gaitskell: That is on a totally different subject. Would not the right hon. Gentleman give us some indication of how the Government intend to proceed in what is, after all, a tremendously important issue?

The Prime Minister: No, Sir. It would be very unwise to go beyond what was said by the Lord Privy Seal in the debate.

Dame Irene Ward: asked the Prime Minister whether, in considering a visit to the Far East, he will contemplate opening negotiations for a visit to the Chinese Government in Pekin.

The Prime Minister: I will bear my hon. Friend's inquiry in mind.

Dame Irene Ward: While thanking my right hon. Friend for that quite "oncoming" Answer, may I ask him to bear in mind that a great many people would like him to take an initiative in Red China and to take the opportunity of visiting that country and making contact with those who now govern it?

The Prime Minister: I am always grateful for these suggestions and I understand the spirit of them. We are to debate the whole Chinese question in a day or two. In these personal efforts which I may try to make, I must try to choose favourable conditions having regard to all the complex problems involved, with our allies and otherwise.

Mr. C. Osborne: asked the Prime Minister if he is aware that the Canadian Prime Minister called on 25th November for a realistic review of Western policies towards China, and a recognition of the importance of bringing that country into any major political settlement; what communications he has had with Mr. Diefenbaker on this matter; and whether he will make a statement.

The Prime Minister: I have read the report of Mr. Diefenbaker's remarks. I would not however at this stage wish to add anything to what my right hon. Friend the Lord Privy Seal said in the course of the debate on the Address on 4th November.

Mr. Osborne: While not wishing to press my right hon. Friend to make a statement now, may I ask him to bear in mind that the Chinese Government regard the vexed question of Formosa as of much greater importance than a seat in the United Nations? When, ultimately, my right hon. Friend discusses this matter with the Canadian and American Governments, will he bear that important point in mind?

The Prime Minister: Yes, Sir. That is one of the great problems of the whole subject.

Mr. P. Noel-Baker: Does the Prime Minister realise that until the Government of Pekin are given a seat in the United Nations, we shall be in breach of our obligations under Article 23 of the Charter? Will the right hon. Gentleman propose that the Assembly of the United Nations should ask the International Court to give an advisory opinion as to whether the seat should be attributed to the Government of Formosa or the Government of Pekin?

The Prime Minister: That is another question. If the right hon. Gentleman gives me notice of it, I will try to answer it.

Mr. G. Campbell: Is not the present position nevertheless that Canada still recognises the Nationalist Government on Formosa?

The Prime Minister: Yes, Sir, and I have read carefully what the Prime Minister of Canada said. He did not do more than point out the complexity and difficulties of this problem.

Mr. Gaitskell: Did not the Prime Minister of Canada call for a realistic review of Western policies and a recognition of the importance of bringing China into any major political settlement? Does the Prime Minister agree with the Prime Minister of Canada?

The Prime Minister: That is quite another matter. The Prime Minister of Canada called for a realistic review of the situation. The right hon. Gentleman must know that a realistic review of the situation depends upon the whole general state of the world today and the position of the different Governments, and it would be folly at this moment for me to try to make any pronouncement on this matter.

Oral Answers to Questions — DISARMAMENT

Mr. Mayhew: asked the Prime Minister what progress has bean made with his proposals for technical studies of the problem of disarmament; and if he will make a statement.

The Prime Minister: At this stage I have nothing to add to what I told the House in reply to Questions on 17th November.

Mr. Mayhew: In view of the rather disappointing reaction to the Prime Minister's proposals, may I ask him whether he has discussed with one or two leading uncommitted countries the possibility of presenting his proposals again in a slightly different form?

The Prime Minister: No, Sir. This matter is now under discussion in the United Nations. I am still hopeful that we shall get a favourable reaction to the proposals which I made.

Mr. P. Noel-Baker: Will the right hon. Gentleman instruct his experts to prepare detailed plans on disarmament matters for submission to whatever committee of experts may be set up?

The Prime Minister: I will certainly consider that.

Oral Answers to Questions — UNITED STATES PRESIDENT-ELECT

Mr. Zilliacus: asked the Prime Minister whether, on his forthcoming visit to President-Elect Kennedy, he will ask for an undertaking that the United States of America will never use tactical or strategic nuclear weapons anywhere either first or without the assent and control of her allies.

The Prime Minister: No arrangements for such a visit have been made.

Mr. Zilliacus: When the Prime Minister does make such arrangements, will he raise this point in view of the fact that without these undertakings—

Mr. Speaker: Order. That supplementary question must be out of order. It is hypothetical.

Oral Answers to Questions — DR. ADENAUER

Mr. Frank Allaun: asked the Prime Minister what consideration will be given, in his forthcoming discussions with Dr. Adenauer, to the proposal to give nuclear missiles to West Germany.

Mr. A. Lewis: asked the Prime Minister (1) whether, during his forthcoming discussions with Dr. Adenauer, he will inform him that Her Majesty's Government will not agree to grant military training bases in Great Britain for the use of West German troops;
(2) whether, when he is discussing with Dr. Adenauer the whole range of matters of common interest to Germany and Great Britain, he will raise the question as to why the Federal Government have requested that Great Britain should not sign an official trade agreement with the German Democratic Republic, when the Federal Government have had such an agreement for nine years, and are at present negotiating on an official basis with the German Democratic Republic for a new trade agreement.

The Prime Minister: As I told the House on 6th December, Dr. Adenauer's visit has, unfortunately, had to be put off for the time being.

Mr. Allaun: Is it not a fact that whenever we raise this question the Prime Minister fobs us off with the excuse that the nuclear warheads would be kept under American control? Is not this a worthless safeguard, since it has been officially admitted that in an emergency the warheads would be handed over to the German commander? Can the right hon. Gentleman trust Speidel, Heusinger, and other German generals with such weapons as these?

The Prime Minister: Regarding the substance of what the hon. Member has said, I hold to what I have said before. However, if I am asked Questions urging me to discuss something with Chancellor Adenauer and he is not coming here, it seems to me that the peg on which those Questions have been hung has fallen out of the wall.

Mr. Lewis: In view of the importance of Question No. 46 to my constituents, who were in the worst-bombed borough in the last war, may I ask the right hon. Gentleman whether he is aware that my constituents and very many thousands of people in this country view with grave alarm the suggestion that these troops should be invited here? Will he give me an assurance that Her Majesty's Government will not in fact give the necessary permission?

The Prime Minister: If the hon. Gentleman puts down a Question, I will try to answer it in its own right. He asked me to discuss something with Dr. Adenauer. As he is not coming here, I can only say that it is a hypothetical Question.

Oral Answers to Questions — MALAYA AND JAPAN

Mr. Bellenger: asked the Prime Minister whether he will take the opportunity of his forthcoming journey to Malaya to visit Japan.

The Prime Minister: As I said in the House on 15th November, I had very much hoped to visit Malaya; but I have no immediate plans to do so.

Mr. Bellenger: Has the right hon. Gentleman seen the report of a very frank interview with the Foreign Secretary of Japan from The Times correspondent in Tokyo on 1st December? As the right hon. Gentleman has made an arduous journey to Moscow, does not he think that he might at least consider British interests and, perhaps, undertake this journey to the Far East, particularly as he is going to Malaya? Will not he reconsider his decision?

The Prime Minister: As I said, I am hoping to go to Malaya. I hope to visit every Commonwealth country as Prime Minister, but the immediate months are very full and will be, perhaps, very anxious. We have a Commonwealth Prime Ministers' Conference in March and we do not quite know how April and May will go with problems of East and West, Berlin and so forth. But I am very hopeful that I shall be able to make this visit within a reasonable time.

Mr. Ridsdale: Is my right hon. Friend aware how pleased I am to hear that he is hoping one day soon to visit Japan? After visiting that country recently, I am aware of the great friendship being offered to this country and how much they are hoping that a visit will be paid soon by a British Prime Minister to Japan.

The Prime Minister: I like making visits, but I have to be careful not to be accused of trying to miss Questions at 3.15.

Mr. Lipton: Does the right hon. Gentleman want any more suggestions about where to go?

The Prime Minister: I know the difficulty members of the party opposite have in choosing whether to go above or below the Gangway.

Sir G. Nicholson: If my right hon. Friend cannot go to Japan himself, could he consider sending some other senior Minister? Is he aware that in Japan the sentiments expressed by my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich (Mr. Ridsdale) are very deeply and widely felt?

Mr. Shinwell: If the right hon. Gentleman cannot find time to go to Malaya, would it be possible for him to visit Dr. Adenauer and discuss with him some of the subjects raised by my hon. Friends in their Questions?

The Prime Minister: I shall have regard to that suggestion.

Oral Answers to Questions — ITALY (PRIME MINISTER'S VISIT)

Mr. Emrys Hughes: asked the Prime Minister if he will make a statement on his official visit to Italy.

Mr. Rankin: asked the Prime Minister if he will make a statement on the outcome of his conversations with Signor Fanfani.

Mr. Healey: asked the Prime Minister if he will make a statement on his talks with the Prime Minister of Italy.

The Prime Minister: I would refer hon. Members to the Written Answer which I gave on 29th November to the hon. Member for Pembroke (Mr. Donnelly).

Mr. Hughes: Is the Prime Minister aware that his assertion that we are all God's children has been received with great interest all over the world? Can he assure us that this conversion to Christianity is permanent? Does it represent the policy of Her Majesty's Government? Also, does he include in God's children the Chinese? Would he not agree that these God's children should be invited into the family of the United Nations?

The Prime Minister: I was asked a Question about the discussions I had with the Prime Minister of Italy. That was answered very fully in a Written Answer by me to the hon. Member for Pembroke on 29th November. With

regard to the hon. Gentleman's supplementary question—I always enjoy them—if he thinks about it, I think that he will agree that this one was not in such good taste as he sometimes shows.

Mr. Rankin: I noted that, according to the reply to my hon. Friend the Member for Pembroke (Mr. Donnelly), the Prime Minister discussed with the Italian Prime Minister the need for solidarity in N.A.T.O. Does that mean that there is a lack of solidarity in N.A.T.O. at the present time, and does this arise because of the overwhelming economic and military power of America?

The Prime Minister: No, Sir. That would be a quite wrong conclusion to draw. Every organisation, however—even organisations that are most widely founded—sometimes requires efforts to keep it in good order and in good shape.

Mr. Healey: In view of the fact that there is only three weeks left of the six months' breathing space offered us in June before the common external tariff of the Common Market comes into being, can the Prime Minister tell us whether, in his conversations with Mr. Fanfani, he reached any basis on which negotiations between the Six and the Seven can now take place, or did he completely waste his time on this issue?

The Prime Minister: The second part of that supplementary question is in the usual form shown by the hon. Member by way of elevating his rather minor importance to something greater than it really is. In regard to the first part of the supplementary question, he will see the answer in the second part of the communiqué to which I have referred.

Mr. Healey: The Prime Minister must not be so sensitive about his position in this House. Can he, nevertheless, give the House some details of where the negotiations between the Six and the Seven now stand, in view of the fact that he has had conversations on this matter with the leaders of a large number of other countries which are involved in the negotiations?

The Prime Minister: That is a quite separate issue. If a Question about it is put on the Order Paper, I will answer it.

CLOSURE OF NEWSPAPERS (RESOLUTION)

The following Questions stood upon the Order Paper:

Mr. THORPE: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department when he will publish the names of those who will carry out the inquiry into the Press, consequent upon the request made by the House of Commons on 2nd December, 1960, to Her Majesty's Government to institute such an inquiry.

Mr. DRIBERG: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how soon, and in what form, the Government proposes to set up an inquiry into monopolistic tendencies in the Press, and kindred topics, in pursuance of the Motion approved by the House of Commons on Friday, 2nd December.

The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. R. A. Butler): I will, with permission, Mr. Speaker, now answer Questions Nos. 71 and 72.
During the debate on 2nd December my right hon. Friend the Minister of State gave several reasons why the Government could not be taken as agreeing to institute an inquiry. We shall, naturally, keep under review the various points of view put forward by hon. Members during the discussion of the Motion, but the Government's position remains as stated by my right hon. Friend.

Mr. Thorpe: Would the right hon. Gentleman not agree that the usual purpose of a Private Member's Motion is to allow discussion on subjects of public concern for which the Government very often have no time? Is he aware of the very grave anxiety expressed on both sides of the House on Friday and that there was a very real feeling that there should be such an inquiry? Could the right hon. Gentleman not go a little further than did his Parliamentary colleague, who merely assured the House that "something may happen"? Would he not really reconsider the matter?

Mr. Butler: No, Sir. The speech of my right hon. Friend the Minister of State was carefully considered both by himself and after consultation with his colleagues in the Government. It represented the Government's view on this important

matter. As it was in some detail, I think that it would be better to study it and see the reason why the Government felt that an inquiry should not be set up.

Mr. Driberg: If, as the right hon. Gentleman says, this is an important matter and the Government's view was directly contrary to my hon. Friend's Motion, why was there no Division? Can the right hon. Gentleman give us any reference in Erskine May which indicates that Resolutions passed by Parliament in private Members' time are, as it were, second-class Resolutions which have no validity and do not count at all? And, if that is so, why is there so much effort on other occasions by the Whips to ensure that such Motions are defeated?

Mr. Butler: This was essentially a Private Member's Motion. The Government stated their view and took no steps to stop the Motion going through. The House decided, and the Government's view remains as stated by my right hon. Friend the Minister of State.

Mr. Gaitskell: Is it not treating with contempt a decision of the House made in private Members' time? The right hon. Gentleman boasts of the fact that the Government did not oppose the view put forward in the Resolution, but if the Government were against it why did they not go into the Lobby? Why was it not challenged on that side of the House? What is the object of having these Motions and Resolutions if the Government ignore the decision of the House?

Mr. Butler: The Government did not ignore the decision of the House. My right hon. Friend stated clearly the Government's view. I was present for a large part of the debate, though I did not see the right hon. Gentleman there. I did not find it a very crowded occasion, though I found that views were sincerely and strongly expressed. We know the procedure of Parliament and I think that the Government took the right line in expressing their view and taking no steps to oppose the Motion.

Mr. K. Robinson: Is the right hon. Gentleman enunciating the doctrine that in future the Government will ignore any Private Member's Motion that the


House carries if it is inconvenient to the Government? Will the right hon. Gentleman say why, within an hour of the closing of the debate, a Government spokesman told the B.B.C. and the Press that the Government proposed to take no notice of the decision of Parliament?

Mr. Butler: On the latter point, I have no information. The Government stated their view quite clearly in the debate and, therefore, I should not have thought that a further statement by the Government was necessary to be given.
On Private Members' Motions, the House cannot have it both ways. If the Government take energetic and strenuous steps to block a private Member's Motion they are regarded as going against the spirit of the House, but if they allow a free discussion on such Motions they are told by hon. Members that they ought to have opposed them.

Mr. Gordon Walker: Would the right hon. Gentleman not agree that after the statement of the Government's view the House took a decision by carrying the Motion which was contrary to that statement? Surely the right hon. Gentleman cannot ignore the fact that the House took its decision after that statement of the Government's view.

Mr. Butler: I do not take the constitutional view that the Government are bound to act on a Motion passed in private Members' time by private Members. The Government were right on this occasion to take the Motion very seriously, but I do not see a constitutional obligation on the Government to act on Private Members' Motions.

Mr. Wyatt: May we have your guidance, Mr. Speaker, on the constitutional position? Surely in this case one cannot distinguish between private Members and other Members, and this is an instruction from the High Court of Parliament to the Minister that there ought to be an inquiry. What remedy has the House of Commons, as the High Court of Parliament, against Ministers who refuse to behave as the High Court of Parliament demands? Ought not such Ministers to be brought before a Select Committee?

Mr. Speaker: I do not think that any point arises there for me.

Mr. Bellenger: Is the Leader of the House not being somewhat inconsistent? Was he not a member of a Government during the war when a Private Member's Motion on equal pay, moved by Miss Cazalet, as she then was, was reversed the following day by the Government because it did not suit them? How, therefore, can the right hon. Gentleman say today that he takes notice seriously of Motions passed by the House when he does not act upon them?

Mr. Butler: There is no analogy between the two occasions. I was involved in the previous one, because I was in charge of the Bill. That was a straight Amendment to a Bill which happened to be carried. The Amendment was then reversed when the House was in a better mood for common sense.

Mr. Woodnutt: Would my right hon. Friend not agree that he is not the only person who ignores the decisions of large assemblies purporting to have authority?

Mr. Shinwell: The hon. Member should come over to this side of the House.

Mr. S. Silverman: Would the Leader of the House seriously reconsider the answers he has given today and the constitutional anomaly which seems to arise out of them? He said that the speech which the Minister of State, Home Office, made on Friday was made after consultation with the Minister's colleagues in the Government, but was not this in order to arrive at a decision on what advice the Government would offer the House of Commons on that occasion?
Now that the advice has been offered and has been unanimously rejected by the House of Commons, will not the right hon. Gentleman reconsider the matter in the light of that—[HON. MEMBERS: "Speech."] Would it not be a very strange constitutional doctrine indeed that the Government were entitled to remain in office, depending on the confidence of the House, and still follow a policy—

Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Member must remember that this is a supplementary question to a Question. We cannot go on like this.

Mr. Silverman: There are only three more words, Mr. Speaker—and still


follow a policy in flagrant contradiction of the unanimous view of the House of Commons?

Mr. Butler: I have explained the position as I see it. I do not think that the Government are obliged to act. We will certainly keep this matter under review if we feel that anything useful can be done in the light of the debate, but we have given our reason why we think that to add an inquiry to the recent Royal Commission's Report—[HON. MEMBERS: "Eleven years ago."]—and all that followed would not necessarily be in the best interests of the Press.

Several Hon. Members: rose—

Mr. Thorpe: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. In view of the totally unsatisfactory nature of the right hon. Gentleman's reply, I beg to give notice that I shall raise this matter on the Adjournment at the earliest opportunity.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Mr. Gaitskell: May I ask the Leader of the House to state the business for next week?

The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. R. A. Butler): Yes, Sir. The business for the next week will be as follows:
MONDAY, 12TH DECEMBER—Consideration of private Members' Motions until seven o'clock.
At seven o'clock the following Government business will be considered:
Second Reading of the Patents and Designs (Renewals, Extensions and Fees) Bill [Lords.].
Consideration of the Motions to approve the International Atomic Energy Agency and the Customs Co-operation Council (Immunities and Privileges) Orders, and the Summer Time Order.
TUESDAY, 13TH DECEMBER—A debate will take place on Defence, which will arise on the Motion standing on the Order Paper in the name of the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition and other right hon. and hon. Members.
WEDNESDAY, 14TH DECEMBER—Committee stage of the Betting Levy Bill.
Consideration of the Motions to approve the National Insurance (Married Women) (Amendment) Regulations, the National Insurance (Mariners) (Amendment) Regulations, and the Cutlery and Stainless Steel Flatware Industry (Scientific Research Levy) Order.
THURSDAY, 15TH DECEMBER—Supply [2nd Allotted Day]:
Motion to move Mr. Speaker out of the Chair.
A debate will take place on Floods until seven o'clock.
Afterwards, there will be a debate on South-West Africa.
These debates will arise on Opposition Amendments.
FRIDAY, 16TH DECEMBER—Consideration of private Members' Motions.
MONDAY, 19TH DECEMBER—The proposed business will be Supply [3rd Allotted Day]:
Motion to move Mr. Speaker out of the Chair, when a debate will arise on an Amendment to take note of the Second Report from the Public Accounts Committee, 1959–60, until seven o'clock.
Afterwards, there will be a debate on the Fourth Report from the Estimates Committee, 1959–60, relating to the Colonial Office.
This will be the first of the three days to be set apart for the consideration of the Reports from the Public Accounts Committee and the Estimates Committee.
It is hoped that all necessary business will have been disposed of in time for the House to adjourn for the Christmas Recess on Wednesday, 21st December, until Tuesday, 24th January.

Mr. Gaitskell: Is it the Government's intention to follow on Monday the same procedure in private Members' time as they did in the debate on the Press? Will they say that they are opposed to the Motion, but allow it to go through without a Division?
Is it the intention on Wednesday to complete the Committee stage of the Betting Levy Bill, as well as the other business? Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that there is a very large number of Amendments proposed to the Betting Levy Bill?

Mr. Butler: In answer to the first part of the right hon. Gentleman's supplementary question, I must reserve the operation of the mystery of the Government's workings until the time comes. On Wednesday, it would be our first desire to obtain the Committee stage of the Betting Levy Bill, and we want to get the business that remains, but we will do it in that order.

Mr. Shinwell: Do the Government propose to put down a Motion on the Order Paper for Tuesday's debate, or are they proposing an Amendment to the Opposition Motion? Or do they intend to accept the Opposition Motion? Will the right hon. Gentleman be good enough to explain the Government's position?

Mr. Butler: I cannot, in answer to a business question, necessarily decide here and now the nature of any Amendment which we may put down. It is certain, I think, that we shall not accept the Motion.

Mr. Biggs-Davison: In view of the concern felt and expressed by Members on both sides of the House, would my right hon. Friend try to arrange time to discuss a Motion in my name and the names of my hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich (Mr. Robert Jenkins) and others of my hon. Friends, concerning the conduct of Dr. Hastings Banda, a delegate to the Central African Federation Constitutional Review Conference?
[That this House takes note of the fact that a medical team which, after lengthy negotiations, visited Nyasaland under the auspices of the World Health Organisation was recently compelled to withdraw from that country because of political agitation and intimidation by members of the Malawi Congress Party headed by Dr. Banda, himself a medical practitioner; further notes that efforts by the Federal health authorities to prevent an outbreak in Nyasaland of smallpox, of which there have this year been 604 cases, including 40 deaths, by means of a widespread vaccination campaign were undermined by political intimidation and misrepresentation by members of the Malawi Congress Party, who spread propaganda alleging that sterilisation resulted from vaccination, and that Dr. Banda refused to denounce these activities on the ground that he could not, for political reasons,

co-operate with the authorities in health matters; and calls upon Her Majesty's Government, at the forthcoming Federal review conference, to refuse to enter into negotiations with Dr. Banda unless he is prepared to co-operate in safeguarding the health of all Africans in Nyasaland and denounces all activities to the contrary.]

Mr. Butler: I cannot guarantee any time. The most that I can undertake to do is to consider that request with my right hon. Friends principally concerned.

Mr. Driberg: Would the right hon. Gentleman be good enough to explain why he bothers to go on finding time for Private Members' Motions, since in his view, Parliament on such occasions is reduced to the level of a school debating society?

Mr. Butler: I continue to pander to the desires of private Members because I find that they like it. I find that the House enjoys the time that it has for such Motions. Friday's debate was a particularly useful debate which, I think, will have its benefits. Just because the Government are unable to accept the conclusion, I do not see why we should find it a waste of time.

Mr. Wyatt: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Is it the case that this House has no power whatever to give instructions to Ministers?

Mr. Speaker: That is not a point of order.

Mr. Warbey: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. Surely it is one of the functions of Mr. Speaker to protect the rights of the House against the Executive. This is a clear clash between Members of the House of Commons and the Executive, in which the Executive are refusing to take note of a decision reached by this House. This is a matter—

Mr. Speaker: Order. I say with respect to the hon. Gentleman that he should not make a speech about it. I do everything I conceive to be proper to protect the rights of minorities in the House—[HON. MEMBERS: "This was a majority."]—and of the majority, assuming that it is a majority, in this case an unopposed majority. My responsibilities in the matter are concluded when the House reaches its decision.

Mr. Mayhew: If there is to be a Government Whip in the debate in private Members' time on Monday, will Government supporters also be informed that it makes no difference whether they vote or not?

Mr. Butler: The answer is, "No, Sir."

Dame Irene Ward: In view of the fact that my right hon. Friend has just announced the charming decision that he panders to private Members, has he seen on the Order Paper the two Motions, connected with railway super-annuitants and unestablished civil servants, to which my name is attached? When will he pander to my wishes by giving time to debate them?
[That this House, being of opinion that exceptional hardship has resulted to British Railways Superannuitants, many of whom are not in receipt of National Insurance benefits, in a period of declining money values, calls upon Her Majesty's Government to bring forward proposals for the alleviation of this hardship.]
[That this House has taken note of the Report of the Royal Commission on the Civil Service, 1955 (Command Paper No. 9613), and the observations of the Commission in Chapter XV, paragraph 743, on the subject of the reckoning of unestablished service for superannuation purposes in the Civil Service, to the effect that there is no question of merit or principle outstanding, that it is in fact now common ground that it is right that unestablished service should reckon in full, and that in the view of the Royal Commission the sole consideration is that of cost; and this House is of opinion that the time has come for Her Majesty's Government to authorise discussions to take place on the Civil Service National Whitley Council with a view to arriving at a reasonable settlement of this long standing problem.]

Mr. Butler: I hope that I shall not have to alienate my hon. Friend so far that she again takes my seat.

Mr. T. Fraser: Will the right hon. Gentleman find time at an early date to debate the Report on the Scottish Licensing Law, which is of topical interest? Scottish Members are feeling a little neglected.

Mr. Butler: I realise that that Report has been published and I will take note of what the hon. Gentleman has said.

Mrs. White: Will the right hon. Gentleman, as Leader of the House, draw the attention of the suitable authorities to the fact that the season tickets issued to hon. Members, owing to some parsimonious policy, expire on 16th December, although the Christmas Recess does not begin until some days later?

Mr. Butler: As Leader of the House I will, with your permission, Mr. Speaker, make some inquiries on that matter.

Mr. Stonehouse: In considering the request of the hon. Member for Chigwell (Mr. Biggs-Davison), will the right hon. Gentleman bear in mind the importance, if he allows a debate, of widening it so that the conduct of Sir Edgar Whitehead may also be considered with that of Dr. Banda, and so that the House may consider the responsibilities of this Parliament in relation to the Vagrancy Act in Southern Rhodesia, which has been universally condemned here?

Mr. S. Silverman: May I once again draw the attention of the right hon. Gentleman, in his capacity as Home Secretary, to the Motion standing on the Order Paper which challenges the correctness of his decision in two recent capital cases, and which has the support of more than 80 hon. Members? May I ask whether he is now prepared to provide some time—it need not be very long—for the House to discuss that matter? Will he bear in mind—and I say this with all respect—that this is a challenge to his personal decision in a matter in which he acts for us and for which he is responsible to the House?

Mr. Butler: Yes, Sir. I am fully aware of the position, of the gravity of the decisions taken and of the seriousness of the issue. I have, however, great difficulty in finding time. All I can do today is to note the hon. Gentleman's request.

Mr. C. Osborne: On the point just raised by the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. S. Silverman), would my right hon. Friend bear in mind that the vast majority of the people in the country sympathise very deeply with him in the personal decisions he has to take,


and that the vast majority of the people would like to see a good more justice mixed with mercy, and feel that cold-blooded murderers ought to be hanged?

Mr. Reynolds: Having questioned the right hon. Gentleman about the Order Paper in previous Sessions, may I thank him and the Clerk and the Officers of the House for the great improvement in the Order Paper? Having got used to the old one, I found it difficult to get used to the new one, but after a few weeks I have found it a great improvement.

Mr. Butler: We should also express our gratitude to the Select Committee on Procedure, which considered this and on whose Report we have acted.

Mr. S. Silverman: rose—

Mr. Speaker: I see that the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. S. Silverman) is rising in his place. I do not want him to go on to a subject of policy. If he has a question on business, I will be glad to hear it.

Mr. Silverman: I wanted to ask the Leader of the House whether he will reconsider the question of the Motion relating to the death penalty with a view to finding a short time to discuss it before the Recess. This is a personal Motion of censure and the right hon. Gentleman ought not to be willing to leave it on the Order Paper without giving the House of Commons an opportunity to consider it.

Mr. Speaker: I thought that the hon. Member had something new to ask. That question has been answered.

OFFICIAL REPORT (CORRECTION)

Mr. Wigg: On a point of order. I have given you notice of this point of order, Mr. Speaker.
Yesterday, I put a Question for Oral Answer to the Secretary of State for War, to elicit from him whether there had been any variation in the estimates of the strength of the Army on 1st April, 1961. When the right hon. Gentleman replied, he stated that the figures would be circulated in the OFFICIAL REPORT, which was a reasonable thing to do. However, the right hon. Gentleman did not reveal that

the Regular Army would be 6,000 weaker on 1st April, 1961, compared with the figure given in the Defence White Paper.
When I read the reply in the OFFICIAL REPORT this morning, I found that the figures did not add up. It is true that the difference is minor, but, as we are to have a defence debate next week, and as one of the things of which hon. Members will obviously wish to take account in preparing their speeches is the strength of our conventional Forces, it is very important that the record should be put right.
May I add that there is no imputation whatever against the Secretary of State for War. This alteration is quite unlike that made by the Minister of Defence in the early part of the year to which I drew attention. Nor is there any animadversion against the Editor of the OFFICIAL REPORT, who does his best in very difficult circumstances. It happens to be a mistake which, I think, should be put right. I trust that the House will forgive me for trespassing on its time to draw attention to this matter.

Mr. Speaker: I am obliged to the hon. Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg) for drawing my attention to this error. The blame must rest with us. It was a printer's error, and it shall be put right.

Dr. Stross: On business, may I ask the Leader of the House—

Mr. Speaker: The hon. Member is too late. I did not see him rising before. I hope that it was not my fault.

BILL PRESENTED

HUMAN TISSUE

Bill to make provision with respect to the use of parts of bodies of deceased persons for therapeutic purposes and purposes of medical education and research and with respect to the circumstances in which post-mortem examinations may be carried out; and to permit the cremation of bodies removed for anatomical examination, presented by Mr. Powell; supported by the Attorney-General, Mr. T. G. D. Galbraith, and Miss Pitt; read the First time; to be read a Second time tomorrow and to, be printed. [Bill 46.]

LOCAL GOVERNMENT GENERAL GRANT (ENGLAND AND WALES)

3.52 p.m.

The Minister of Housing and Local Government and Minister for Welsh Affairs (Mr. Henry Brooke): I beg to move,
That the General Grant Order, 1960, dated 25th November 1960, a copy of which was laid before this House on 30th November, be approved.
It may be convenient to the House, Mr. Speaker, if with this Motion we discussed the next one on the Order Paper:
That the Grants and Rates (Transitional Adjustments) Regulations, 1960, dated 25th November 1960, a copy of which was laid before this House on 30th November, be approved.

Mr. Speaker: If the House so pleases, yes.

Mr. Brooke: This is the second General Grant Order to be made under the Local Government Act, 1958. It is unavoidable that an Order like this looks rather technical, more congenial to maths, students than arts students, if I may put it that way.
The Order has two main purposes. The first is to prescribe the aggregate amount of the general grants for England and Wales for the next two years, and the second is to determine the way in which the total amount is to be divided among county councils and county borough councils.
If hon. Members read the White Paper which accompanies the Order, they will find there all the background figures and explanations. I understand that the figures embodied in the Order and Regulations have the assent of the Association of Municipal Corporations, the County Councils Association, and the London County Council, who have been consulted. The aggregate amounts of the general grants proposed are £454 million for the year 1961–62, and £472 million for the subsequent year, 1962–63.
The new procedure provides us with a far better forward view of what is proposed for the services in question during the two-year period of the grant than the old system of percentage grants ever did or could. We can now see in advance the

development that is planned and the cost that it will entail.
On these services we envisage an expenditure next year of more than £818 million and, in 1962–63, of more than £851 million. The figure of £818 million is an increase of £48 million over the corresponding estimate of the current year and £851 million for 1962–63 is an increase of no less than £81 million over that figure. In other terms, expressed as a percentage, next year's estimate is an increase of 6·3 per cent. over the current year and that for 1962–63 an increase of 10·6 per cent. The grants to local authorities increase accordingly. The grant of £454 million proposed for next year is an increase of £25 million on the current year and the figure of £472 million is the grant for 1962–63.
The House will observe that those are very large figures. They allow for increases in pay and prices since the last estimate was prepared and also for the extra cost which is involved in the development of the services. In paragraphs 14 to 27 of the White Paper, which is available in the Vote Office, hon. Members will see an account of the expected development.
All the services entail extra expenditure in this way. In the years since the war, it is education which has been developing very fast indeed, and that continues, but in this forthcoming period it is interesting to see that the cost of the local health services may be growing proportionately even faster, because they have not only their normal development, but also the stimulus of the Mental Health Act, which Parliament recently passed.
In arriving at these estimates of expenditure, the same procedure has been followed on this occasion as, the House will remember, was followed at the time of the first General Grant Order; that is to say, first, local authorities were invited by the Departments responsible for the various services which are involved to submit the detailed estimates for the two years ahead. I am sure that all my colleagues in the Government who are concerned would wish to join with me in expressing our thanks to the local authorities for their very responsible and thorough approach to this task, and for the speedy way in which they carried it out.
The estimates sent in by the local authorities were then examined by the Departments concerned and it was seldom necessary to question any individual estimated item. But in some instances the individual estimates added up to totals which seemed a bit beyond the bounds of probable spending. The next stage lay in informal discussion of the totals with representatives of the Association of Municipal Corporations, the County Councils Association and the London County Council. Where there were any grounds for regarding the local authorities' estimates in the aggregate as excessive—and by "excessive" I mean over-optimism as to what they could do in the time—the Department concerned made a reasoned proposal for some adjustment of the amount.
That proposal by the Department was discussed and sometimes itself became modified in the light of discussion with the associations. At the same time, adjustments were also made for increases in pay and prices and other costs which had occurred or had been settled since the date at which the individual estimates of local authorities had been made. That date was 30th June of this year. In every case the local authorities' own estimate of the effect of these increases was accepted.
By this process, general agreement was reached that the estimates of expenditure relevant to the general grant should be settled at £818·19 million and £851·15 million for the two years respectively. The final stage preceding the fixing of the aggregate amount of the grants was the more formal statutory consultation which I held personally with members of the Association of Municipal Corporations, the County Councils Association, and the London County Council.
I ought, perhaps, to put in here a reference to the limitation imposed by the 1958 Act itself on the relevance of future increases in levels of prices, costs and remuneration. As the Report explains, in paragraph 9, these increases can only be taken into account if they are foreseeable and measurable. But there is provision enabling an increase to be made in the grant if an unforeseen increase in these items occurs during the grant period, and, as the House will

remember, that provision was, in fact, invoked about this time last year.
Before leaving the general grant figures I would like to make the point that, in relation to the agreed estimates of future expenditure, the grant is rather more than would have been payable to local authorities if the old percentage grants had continued to operate.
In our discussions on the Rating and Valuation Bill last week the hon. Member for Fulham (Mr. M. Stewart) alleged that the scheme of general grant, together with the provisions of that Bill, were:
part of a strategy, which goes on all the time, a shift of the total cost of maintaining a civilised society away from taxes and towards rates …"—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 30th November, 1960; Vol. 631, c. 512.]
Within a week this Order has disproved that allegation entirely. The total amounts of the general grants represent well over half of the relevant expenditure of the local authorities, in the same way as, in the whole field of local government, taxes bear more than half of the net cost of local services.
Before the war, the position was reversed. Rates then bore about 58 per cent. of the net cost and taxes only 42 per cent. A major switch has taken place. It has taken place in spite of the central Government having assumed responsibility for services which were previously paid for out of the local rates, for example, the hospitals, the public assistance service as it used to be called, and so on.
I would like to add that during the financial year 1959–60—that was the first year of general grants—the Government paid over to local authorities 90 per cent. of the general grant for that year, leaving the remaining 10 per cent. for subsequent payment. During the current year 1960–61, which is the second year of general grants, the Government are paying 91¼ per cent. of the general grant for the year together with the balance outstanding from the previous year. It is proposed to pay 92½ per cent. of the general grant in 1961–62, and 93¾ per cent. in 1962–63, in each case together with the balance from the previous year.
In this way we take another step towards the position where 100 per cent. of the general grant will be paid during


the financial year to which the grant relates. This is a new advantage that accrues from the general grant system to the local authorities, an advantage which would never have been practicable under the old percentage grants.
I would like now to turn to the changes that are made in the formula for distributing the grant between all the counties and county boroughs. This formula has been reviewed in the light of representations made by individual local authorities and accepted by the local authority associations and the Government. It is obviously impossible to devise a distribution formula which will completely satisfy all local authorities. The aggregate amount of the grant is fixed and, therefore, one authority's gain can only be at the expense of another.
A change in the formula which seems equitable to one body of authorities may, therefore, seem quite inequitable to others. This is, incidentally, particularly the case with what is known as the rate product deduction. The rate product deduction, as hon. Members will recollect, was a feature of the old education grant formula for many years. It was included in the general grant mainly with the object of avoiding too serious a change in the pattern of grants under the new system.
There have been several representations from local authorities to the effect that this factor is unnecessary now because the rate-deficiency grant plays a part in equalising rates. Against this, other local authorities point out that a considerable number of authorities, so-called the richer authorities, are not affected at all by the rate-deficiency grant, and that these authorities would be the greatest beneficiaries if the rate product deduction were abolished. As I said, the rate product deduction was a feature of the old education grant where it co-existed with the former Exchequer equalisation grants. The Order which I am asking the House to approve proposes a modest reduction of the rate deduction factor from 9d. to 8d.
The supplementary grant for declining population has been increased. It has been increased by reducing from 5 per cent. to 1 per cent., measured over a period of twenty years, the percentage of decline that is needed to qualify. I

think that this goes some way to meet representations from local authorities that falling populations, and, more particularly, falls in the number of school children, mean losses of grant which cannot be matched by reduction in expenditure on their services. It is not easy to match falls in child population by an immediate reduction in the number of schools, or, for that matter, in the number of teachers required by the remaining children. Most of these claims have been made by areas where the population is going down owing to overspill schemes. More local authorities qualify for the grant as a result of the change in the formula, and the total amount of the supplementary grant in respect of this factor is increased by over £1 million.
The third change is an increase in the amount per head for young children and old people. In some areas where the proportions of young children or old people are higher than the average—I might say that it is not usual for both to be higher than average in the same area—it has been represented that more grant should be allowed to meet the extra cost of providing them with health and welfare services. I think that it is obvious that there is a greater call on these services from the young and the old, and an investigation of costs that has been made indicates that an increase in the weighting for the supplementary grant would be justified.
The present increase allocates an additional £½ million or so to this grant, for the benefit of both classes of population, the young and the old. Each of these changes, we think, is justified on its merits. There may be a case for more substantial changes when the effects of revaluation are known—that is, of course, for the grant period which will begin in April, 1963—but we are not dealing with that now. For the time being it would, in the Government's view, be difficult to justify any changes which would radically alter the pattern of distribution.
Now I come to the Grants and Rates (Transitional Adjustments) Regulations, which also require the affirmative Resolution of the House. The principles of transitional adjustments are set out in Section 15 of the 1958 Act. They provide for contributions to those local authorities which are estimated to lose


from the financial provisions of that Act. These contributions are raised by levies on the authorities which gain, and they are in proportion to what local authorities gain. The gains and losses are estimated by comparing the rates required to be levied in 1957–58 with those that would have been required in that year had the financial provisions of the 1958 Act been then in force. The general effect of the Act was that about two-thirds of all local authorities were estimated to gain by the changes it made.
Section 15 provided for full reimbursement to the losing authorities, in 1959–60, of the estimated losses, and reimbursement of 90 per cent. of the losses in 1960–61. It also provided that compensation to losers could be extended to later years by regulations. These are those Regulations. They provide for 80 per cent. of the estimated losses to be made good in 1961–62, and 70 per cent. in 1962–63, so that they embody no new principle; they simply continue the process which the Act laid down for the first two years.
About 50 of the losing authorities have represented to us that compensation ought to be maintained at the 1960–61 level of 90 per cent. until there is an opportunity for a full review of the adjustments when the effects of the 1963 revaluation are known. It is entirely understandable that the losing authorities would like to retain these contributions for as long as possible, and at their present level, but, equally, there are the interests of the gaining authorities to consider, and they are in the majority. With the support of the associations of local authorities the Government have reached the conclusion that it would be reasonable towards both groups to reduce the contributions progressively in the next two years and then to review the adjustments before revaluation takes effect in 1963, as the losing authorities have suggested.
I do not think that any other issues of general importance are raised by these Regulations, but there is one rather technical point which I should perhaps mention, for the record. Hon. Members may wish to know why a new notional general grant has been prescribed for 1957–58—the basic year from which gains and loses are calculated. The new figure, which is £6 million lower than

the old, takes account of the latest information about specific grants payable for that year, and the distribution formula has been modified accordingly. The notional grant is relevant to the calculation of gains and losses only for the purpose of the transitional scheme; neither it nor anything else in the Regulations affects in any way the amount of the total charge on the Exchequer.
The general grant, which evoked so much criticism before anybody had any experience of it, has been working for two years, and all the evidence indicates that it is working well. I so clearly remember the allegations that the general grant was certain to be used as a means of making wholesale cuts in Exchequer assistance to local authorities, and allegations that the proper development of education and the other services was going to be hamstrung by the change. The people who were unwise enough to believe all that look very foolish now.
There is an interesting point here, in that the general grant for 1959–60—the first year of all—which was £402 million, was based on an expected expenditure level of £723½ million. From the latest figures it looks as though expenditure in that year amounted not to £723½ million, but to about £707½ million, which is £16 million lower. On the evidence of these figures the local authorities, in the first year of the general grant, received £8 million or £9 million more than they would have had from the Exchequer if the old percentage grants had continued.
We do not yet know how all the figures for the current year—the second year of the general grant; 1960–61—will work out. The estimates of expenditure on which the general grant for 1960–61 was based allow for an increase of nearly 9 per cent. over 1959–60. The 1961–62 and 1962–63 figures are equally fair. Among local authorities I find that the criticism of the principle of general grant has largely vanished, and hon. Members who speak of the evils of the grant, as one did last week—

Mr. Speaker: Order. I am in some difficulty about this. As at present advised, I believe that a discussion of the virtues or vices of the principle of general grant would be out of order in this debate.

Mr. Michael Stewart: Since the right hon. Gentleman has already made one or two remarks of that kind, shall I be in order in commenting on those remarks, Mr. Speaker?

Mr. Speaker: No. I think that the vice is mine. I should have pounced earlier upon the right hon. Gentleman. I have had to do it now to stop those things happening which the hon. Member is proposing.

Mr. Brooke: If my behaviour has been in any way vicious I should like to acquire virtue in your eyes, Mr. Speaker, and sit down now.

4.18 p.m.

Mr. Michael Stewart: These Statutory Instruments were laid before the House on 30th November. That was eight days ago. The very first point that I want to make is that there ought to be a longer period between the publication of these Statutory Instruments and the debating of them by Parliament. They have a very wide scope. The matters with which they are concerned are of great importance to people in all parts of the United Kingdom. This situation, whereby they are made known to Parliament and the country on Wednesday of one week and are debated on Thursday of the following week, has some defects.
First, it does not give hon. Members sufficient opportunity to consult their local authorities as to the effects of the proposals and, secondly, it does not give time for the publication of informed comment on these very technical matters. The Government ought to aim at an interval of at least a fortnight between the publication of this Orders and Regulations and Parliament debating them. I trust that that will be remembered in future years.
That consideration seems all the more necessary with regard to Statutory Instruments of this kind which, before they can be understood have, so to speak, to be translated into ordinary English. That remark applies particularly to the Grants and Rates (Transitional Adjustments) Regulations, which are made by virtue of Section 15 (2) of the Local Government Act, 1958. That subsection says:
For the purposes of this section the loss or gain accruing to a rating authority as aforesaid shall be ascertained in accordance with regulations made by the Minister, and such

regulations shall provide that it shall be ascertained, on such assumptions as may be specified in the regulations, by reference to the rate required to be levied for the year 1957–58, to the rate which would have been required to be levied for that year if the foregoing provisions of this Part of this Act (other than section eight thereof) had been in force for that year, and to the product for the area of the rating authority of a rate of one penny in the pound for that year, estimated as if the said provisions had been in force for that year, but with any exceptions or modifications specified in the regulations.
The draftsman has, happily, ended with a rhyming couplet that draws attention to the fact that it is the end of the sentence—a fact which would not have otherwise been apparent to the hasty reader. That is the dictionary which anyone trying to translate the transitional adjustments Regulations has to use, and that is merely the first step in considering the impact of these Instruments. I trust, therefore, that the Minister will bear in mind in future years the need for a longer period between publication and debate.
I do not think that the Minister dealt with the fact that these transitional adjustment Regulations will go on being made for such years as the Minister himself may specify. They are not meant to be a permanent feature of the general grant. I do not think that the right hon. Gentleman gave any forecast about how much longer he expects to be making such Regulations. Perhaps we shall hear that at the end of the debate. This is only the second General Grant Order. When the Local Government Act was introduced, it was envisaged that General Grant Orders would be made for periods of two or more years, two to be the minimum, except the two specifically prescribed as the period for the first Order. There has so far been no attempt to make one for any longer period than two years, and even in the currency of the first Order it was found necessary to introduce an increase Order.
That is interesting, because it throws light on a comment made at the time of the passing of the Local Government Act. We were told that these general grant provisions would enable the central Government to know for longer in advance with what expenditure they were being saddled. I merely remark that they have not done so yet. This is only the second one. The first one failed to


do so because an increase Order proved necessary during the currency of the period. It is very likely, for reasons I will mention later, that the same thing will happen during this period. We must conclude, therefore, that that particular virtue claimed for the Local Government Act, 1958, has not been secured in the event.
The Minister mentioned—I will just touch on this point—that some people who had suggested that this method of financing local government would result in restriction had, as he put it, been proved foolish. I wonder to whom the right hon. Gentleman was referring. The most prominent of the persons who said that the general grant would result in restriction was the present Minister of Health, who claimed for the Local Government Act, 1958, that it was part of the Government's policy for reduction of expenditure. I wonder whether the Minister has told his colleague how foolish he looks. I do not think that he has, because, for reasons which I shall show, I think it is having, and was intended to have, the effect the Minister of Health then ascribed to it.
I want to look now at the process by which the total grant and the distribution are arrived at. The Minister gave a description of that process, but there are certain comments which I think it necessary to make. The procedure is as follows. First, the local authorities put up to the Ministry estimates of their expenditure on the relevant services for the next two years. The local authorities put up the estimates, and the Ministry cuts them down—that is the second stage in the process. In this instance, the Ministry cut them down for the first year period from £834 million to £818 million, and for the second year from £870 million to £851 million. We ought to know a little more about this process of Ministerial cutting down.
We are told, in paragraph 6 of the White Paper, that the proposals put up by the local authorities are examined closely in the Departments. I take it that means the Departments of central Government. As I read that phrase, I wondered how much detail they went into. I got the impression from what the Minister said that they go into a

good deal of detail. He said it was not, as a rule, found necessary to question particular items. That suggests that the examination in the Departments is an examination item by item of every project of expenditure in every one of the relevant services. I should like to ask, what has become of the greater freedom for local authorities and the less necessity for them to answer detailed questions which was claimed as one of the benefits to accrue from the Local Government Act, 1958?
It is clear from this procedure that local authorities are subjected to very close and detailed scrutiny by the central Government, not only on their estimated total expenditure on the services but on each particular project. The Minister said that in the course of these discussions there might be a reasoned proposal for adjustment. Does that mean, for example, that a particular Department, say the Ministry of Health, says to a particular local authority, "We see that your estimates are based on the assumption that you will carry out certain projects in the field of mental health in the next two years. We do not think that you will, or we think that you ought to postpone them until another year"? Is that what a reasoned proposal for adjustment means? If so, we cannot conclude that local authorities enjoy a greater freedom from central Government control, or that there is less time spent in argument between central Government and local authority than there was under the previous system.
Those are the first two stages: the local authority puts up the estimates, the Ministry cuts them down. The third stage is that the total figure of grant, which has been arrived at as the result of Ministerial cutting down, is distributed to the local authorities on a formula partly laid down in the Act and partly subject to variation by Ministerial Regulations. The Minister said, if I remember rightly, that this distribution had received the assent of the local authority associations. But I think that the House should realise—it is a fact by no means immediately apparent from reading the papers—that the distribution of the general grant set out in tables at the end of the White Paper is described as a provisional distribution of general grant. It is not necessarily what the authorities are actually to get.
Let us see how it works out in certain cases. One authority which was brought to my notice was told, under the provisions of the General Grant Order, the one made in 1958, that its provisional share for the year 1959–60 would be a little over £1 million. It was told that, of course, when the general grant was made at the end of 1958. On the basis of that information, in the following spring the local authority determined its rate for the year 1959–60. But by the end of 1959, the Ministry having revised the estimate, the local authority found it would get about £52,000 less than the £1 million provisional estimate. So a local authority is given only a provisional estimate of what it will get It has to fix its rate on the basis of this provisional estimate, but the House should not assume that those estimates are the sums of money that each local authority will, in fact, receive. Some local authorities may be more fortunate and some may be less fortunate.
I suggest that the next time a general grant is put before the House we should have, for the previous years, tables showing both what the provisional distribution was and what, in the event, the local authorities actually got. I do not think that we quite realise how slow-moving a procedure this is. It is two years since we debated the last General Grant Order, but it was only in the spring of this year that the first financial year governed by that General Grant Order was concluded, so we are not yet in a position properly to judge what has been the effect on each particular authority of the General Grant Order made two years ago.
Under this procedure the House is not in so good a position for judging the financial relationship between central and local government as it was under the procedure which existed before the passing of the Local Government Act, 1958. I take up, therefore, the phrase the Minister used when he said that under this procedure we could get a better view of what was to happen to local government services. In view of the discrepancies which can occur between the provisional estimates of each authority's share of grant and what they actually get, I doubt very much whether local authorities or the House can get so clear a view, either of what is happening or what will happen.
I mentioned three steps in the process. The estimates are put up, they are cut down, and the total grant is distributed by a formula. The fourth step is that the local authority then gets its grant in instalments during the year, and this, together with the money it raises in rates, it can proceed to spend on the services. It is important to notice that, although the local authority puts up certain estimates for any particular services as a basis for the calculation of grant, once the grant is being distributed the local authority is not under any bond actually to spend on the services the amount that it puts in the estimate. That means that if we look at page 10 of this White Paper, under "Estimates of Expenditure", we cannot conclude from that that these are the amounts that local authorities will spend.
What will happen as between one local authority and another? The estimates which all local authorities put up are invariably cut down before the total of the grant is secured. That means that any local authority which, in the two-year period, spends what it originally estimated will have an extra burden on its rates. It estimates that it will spend £X over a given two years. That amount is cut down before the total grant is calculated. Total grant, therefore, and its share of the grant, are based on the assumption that it will spend only £X minus £Y during those years. If it does, in fact, spend £X, the difference has to fall entirely on the rates. If, during the two-year period, it proves both reasonable and possible for a local authority to spend more than its original estimates, all that extra has to fall entirely on the rates.
Conversely, take the case of a local authority that takes a meaner view of its duties to the public and which is always ready to seek any excuse for cutting down its services. It has got a grant on the assumption that it will spend a given amount on its services. It manages to spend less, but the advantage of that will go entirely to the local rates. There is, therefore, throughout the whole working of this system a prize for local authorities which skimp the public services and a special difficulty for local authorities which take a generous view of their duties. That general criticism of the whole system remains.
I want to say a word or two about block and percentage grants. When we speak of a percentage grant we have to remember that the exact figure per cent. can be varied. If anyone were to say, "I prefer a percentage grant system," that does not necessarily mean that he is wedded for all time to the particular percentages that were in force before the 1958 Act was passed. We on this side of the House have frequently expressed the view that the actual percentage found by central government under the percentage grant system ought to be increased. It is not an answer to say that the block grant gives more than the old percentages would have given. No doubt that is because the old percentages were inadequate percentages. As a contribution to the argument in principle between block grant and percentage grant, that has no validity.
I have described the process; let us see how it has worked out on this occasion. If we take the first two steps, the putting up of the estimates and the cutting of them down by the Ministry, what has been the effect over the years of the operation of those steps? I think that it can be described as follows. Take the first year in which this came into operation, the financial year 1959–60. The amount of grant then—I give this to the Minister—was 11 per cent. higher than that given by the percentage grant system in the previous year. We can say there was an 11 per cent. increase of grant for the relevant services as between 1958–59 and 1959–60.
It sounded very generous. It was, of course, one way of making the thing attractive to local authorities that in the first year in which it was introduced there should be an exceptional increase in grant of 11 per cent. In the next year the increase of grant over the previous year fell to 6·7 per cent. In the next year, 1961–62, it will be an increase of only 6 per cent. and in the year after that there will be an increase of only 4 per cent.
We are dealing all the time with services which in a civilised society must expand. The need for educational expansion is beyond dispute. The propriety of a society which is getting wealthier expanding its services for the mentally sick is not in dispute. The need for the fuller use of powers of town and

country planning and a rise in expenditure on that service is not in dispute Yet, in dealing with all these expanding services where the total amount of money spent ought quite properly to be expected to rise year after year, the rate of increase under successive general grants is being gradually taken off. The grant made for 1958 and operating for 1959–60 was exceptionally large.
I should remind the House that it was the one made in the year preceding the General Election and that things have never been quite so good for local authorities since. We also notice that over the three years from the year ending 1960 to the year ending 1963 the total increase in the amount of money which local authorities have wanted to spend has been 23 per cent. What they wanted to spend in 1963 was 23 per cent. more than what they wanted to spend in 1960. The grant, however, will have risen by only 17½ per cent. in those three years.
If the Minister calculates for each successive year that this has been in operation the proportion which the grants bear to the estimated expenditure of the local authorities, he will find that that proportion has been falling as the years go by. That is why I have said and now repeat that we are here faced with a strategy that shifts gradually but unmistakably the burden of the services away from the central Exchequer and towards the local rates. I am aware that there was a big advance when this scheme was first introduced, but since then the movement has been entirely in the other direction.
It is important to remember this when the Minister quotes figures of absolute increases in the grant year after year. Of course, the total of the grant increases year after year. There are more people in the country, and we are supposed to be living in a society which is getting wealthier every year, but these figures of absolute increases tell us very little. We have to see them in relation to the growth of population and the total size of the national income, and compare the size of the grant with the size of the total expenditure that local authorities expect they will be carrying out.
Another thing which the Minister pointed out—and I thought that he took some pride to himself in this—was that local authorities in one year estimated


that they were to spend £723 million, but, in fact, spent only £707 million. It is a stock defence of the size of the grant to argue that the local authorities take too optimistic a view of what they can spend, and that, in fact, their own estimates are not such as would warrant a bigger grant.

Mr. Mark Woodnutt: Would not the hon. Gentleman agree that there is a great tendency, when estimating and putting in a forecast on which the grant will be based, to overestimate rather than underestimate? In view of that fact, it is to be expected that the actual figures to be worked out will be lower than those submitted in the estimates.

Mr. Stewart: I do not dispute that, but the question I ask is why is it that local authority estimates are not greater than they are. I think that if we ask that question, we shall get some interesting answers.
There are five factors affecting and limiting what local authorities either can or want to do, as against what they really need to do. The first is one that I have often mentioned in the House—the burden on local authorities of interest rates. For example, if we look at the local government financial statistics, and 1958–59 is the last year mentioned in them, and if we compare that year with the year immediately before it, we shall see that in that period the total expenditure of local authorities went up by a little over 6 per cent., but that their expenditure on loan charges went up by 10 per cent.
That is one factor which is checking and discouraging local authorities in the expansion of services—this realisation that an increasing proportion of every £1 they spend goes not on providing the services, but simply on paying interest on the money borrowed. The Minister and the Government, by their interest rates policy, have created a situation which discourages local authorities, and the effect of that discouragement in their estimates is often used by the Minister as a reason to justify the limited size of the general grant.
We notice that particularly in the service of planning. For example, again the local government financial statistics show that as between the year ended

1958 and the year ended 1959, loan charges on the service of town and country planning went up by as much as one-third during that single year, and loan charges in that service account for about three-eighths of the whole of the money spent on it. It is not surprising to find therefore, that we are told, in paragraph 27 of the White Paper, that expenditure on town and country planning has been less than expected, and that we find, on page 10, that it is anticipated that in 1962–63 only about £2 million will be spent on that service. The Barbican Development Scheme, in the City of London, will cost £15 million, and this figure therefore indicates at what a very slow rate this very necessary service is progressing.
I have mentioned this first factor of interest rates. Secondly, there is the effect on authorities of the high cost of land. Many of them are being induced to postpone or forgo services which they would like to carry out wherever those services require the purchase of land, because of the prohibitively high prices to which land in some parts of the country has risen.
A third factor which may come into play during the period of this general grant is labour costs. Quite recently, wage claims have been made which may face the local authorities with an expenditure of about £13 million. I am sure that the Minister is aware of that, and I trust that we shall hear, at the end of the debate, that the Government will keep an eye on this problem and will be prepared, if necessary, to introduce an increase Order to deal with that factor, or indeed any other unexpected cause of increased expenditure.
A fourth factor limiting local authority estimates is expenditure which they have outside the field of the services covered by the block grant. Take, for instance, the recent statement about an increase in police pay. That will involve some increased rate expenditure. Although that is not a block grant service, money has to be found out of the rates, and that will limit what the local authorities feel they can spend on the other services.
Fifthly, and perhaps in the long run the most serious factor limiting local government expenditure, is the acute shortage of expert workers in so many


fields. Very often, a local authority's decision to spend only a certain amount on the service of town and country planning is determined by the limited availability of the services of skilled planning officers and architects. What an authority can do in its health service may be limited by a shortage of midwives. What it can do in its education service may be limited by a shortage of teachers. It is not sufficient, therefore, for the Minister to say that, after all, the local authorities asked only for so much, or that the local authorities in previous years were unable to spend what they had estimated.
If that happens, the Minister ought not to regard it as a triumph, because it does not represent a real economy—that is, doing the same amount of work with less money—but reflects a failure to do the work because there were not sufficient skilled people there to do it. That is not, or should not be, an occasion for triumph by the Minister. It should be an occasion for regret. I had hoped that he would have touched on this point in his speech, for this is seriously affecting local government as a whole.
The Minister ought not to regard himself so much as the person who checks local authority expenditure, but as the person who helps and leads local authorities in the carrying out of necessary and humane social services, and I therefore hope that the Government will address their mind to this problem of the shortage of skilled workers in local government services of all kinds.
I want to say a word on the distribution formula, and the only point on which I wish to touch is the alteration that has been made with regard to declining populations. We on this side of the House were comforted a little by the fact that the alteration had been made. It goes to show that the things which we say on this side are not entirely without result, even when we are dealing with the right hon. gentleman the Minister of Housing and Local Government. My hon. Friend the Member for East Ham, South (Mr. Oram), other hon. Members and myself, whose local authorities were affected by or who were concerned with the question in general, have raised this point of the unfairness of the general grant, particularly to local

authorities with declining populations, and it is some comfort to observe that the Minister has gone some way in the direction in which we asked him to go.
I ask him, however, to consider this situation: the supplementary grant to declining populations is calculated with reference to the decline over the last twenty years. It used to be twenty-one years and it is now twenty. Does that give sufficient help to local authorities who have suffered a very sharp decline in population quite recently? Ought one not to look at what has happened to populations over a much shorter period, say over the last five years, than over the last twenty years? I have a list of authorities here in which there have been marked declines in population in the two years between 1957 and 1959. In Smethwick, there was a population drop of 2·6 per cent. in those two years; in Derby 2·9 per cent.; in East Ham and Wolverhampton, 2·5 per cent.; and in Leicester, 2 per cent. Those are declines in population between 1957 and 1959.
It is also noticeable that when a decline of population occurs it is accompanied by a very marked decline in the number of school children, so that at times the local authorities will get a bit more because of this concession which the Minister has made over the declining population grant and, on the other hand, will lose because of the decline in the number of school children. What it receives under the rate deficiency grant will also be adversely affected. I therefore think that the Minister should look into the question yet again. He may find that it is not only regulations but part of the wording of the Act which need to be altered.
What is significant about the distribution formula is the way in which it enables the Minister to control the destinies of particular local authorities. By an alteration of a single paragraph in one of these Orders or Regulations he can make differences of £10,000, £20,000 or £30,000 to the grants of particular authorities. At the end of the day local authorities have not much more freedom from control by the central Government. This is another way in which more power is placed in the Minister—his power to regulate the distribution formula.
May I comment briefly on the effects on certain services? I will say nothing about education, despite my former associations with it and present affection for it, because that will be dealt with by my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland, North (Mr. Willey), who is to conclude the debate from this side of the House. I notice that under paragraph 18 any expenditure arising from the implementation of any part of the Anderson Report will be dealt with separately, although I am not clear how and by what machinery, and I hope that we shall be told.
I will also comment on planning. I remarked earlier how specially hit that service is by the burden of interest rates and the cost of land. The Minister should remember that there is a great need for certain local authorities, in particular, to plan city centres, but that it is a very expensive process and that it is doubtful whether the estimated expenditure on planning mentioned in the White Paper measures up to the amount of work which needs to be done in that respect.
Thirdly, I want to mention mental health, which is referred to in paragraphs 21 and 22 of the White Paper. There are very great differences indeed between one local authority and another in the way in which they carry out their responsibilities, either under previous legislation or under the recent Mental Health Act. Some of them have been extremely go-ahead and have been pioneers, but others lag far behind. The Minister ought to keep a special eye on the subject to see that laggard authorities are brought nearer to the level of their more public-spirited colleagues. In particular, the White Paper mentions the need for an increase in the number of training centres provided both for children and for adults and in the residential accommodation provided for patients who may need residential care.
May I comment on these training centres? A little while ago, through the courtesy of the Society for Mentally Handicapped Children, I saw a film, which the Minister may have seen, entitled "There was a Door", which described what can be done to help those who are very seriously mentally afflicted and stressed the great importance, in particular, of industrial training centres for the older mental patients.
More and more we are coming to the conclusion that, as far as humanly possible, the mentally afflicted should live in the community and not out of it. One special reason for that is that at present the more serious forms of mental affliction appear to be incurable, but that, after all, was held of many diseases in the past which are now curable. We do not know what future science may offer in that respect. If, in general, the seriously mentally handicapped live away from the community, there will not be the same spur to try to find cures for serious mental disorders as there will be if they live in the community and the community is kept aware of the problem. When I saw that film and made a further study of the matter, I was amazed by what can be done for those who at first seemed to be doomed to a life of complete seclusion and uselessness.
It is very important that this work should be carried on and expanded, and I hope that the Minister will not allow ideas about the independence of local government to be interpreted to mean that if a local authority chooses to neglect its duty in this matter and save on the rates, he will allow it to get away with such a policy.
When these subjects are debated we need rather fuller information and a rather longer time between the publication of the Order and our debate on it. Despite the figures of absolute increase of money which the Minister quotes, we ought to realise the quietly restrictive nature of this policy on the independence of local authorities and on their power to expand their services. The Minister himself drew attention to that not long ago when we discussed the Rating and Valuation Bill, for he pointed out that under that Bill the rateable values of local authorities would be increased and that he would have to take that into account when the next general grant was considered, as he put it, to redress the balance between central and local expenditure. That phrase suggests that in his opinion the central Government are bearing too much and that he wants to push more of the burden still on to local expenditure. I must tell him that we on this side of the House do not accept that.
Whatever criticism we may have of the Order and Regulations, we cannot vote


against them because we all want the local authorities to have the money. There is a difficulty about the procedure of the House in the twentieth century. Historically, the procedure of the House was designed to prevent the Crown from spending money on purposes which, to the country at large, seemed unwise or unnecessary. All that has changed. Instead of an irresponsible Sovereign we have an elected Government, and what we want is procedure to make sure that enough is spent on purposes which the nation believes to be wise and necessary.
But all our procedure is devised, as in this debate, to trying to restrict expenditure. We have to recognise today that it may sometimes be necessary to say to central Governments and local governments, "You ought to spend rather more". It is because the general grant procedure does not fully realise that necessity that we continue to register our protest against this way of handling our local finances.

5.0 p.m.

Mr. Frederic Harris: I wish to take a little further what the hon. Member for Fulham (Mr. M. Stewart) said in regard to the effect of the general grant on the local ratepayer. I agree with the hon. Gentleman that the increased costs of the services covered in the General Grant Order will, in due course, automatically impose a greater percentage burden upon the local ratepayer. In my view, this is a very disturbing feature.
In my borough council, county council and Parliamentary work, I have always been keenly interested in local authority finance. I have very decided views about it, some of which are known to the House. This debate on these two years of general or block grant for 1961–62 and 1962–63 gives me an opportunity to refer specifically to the effects on my own very important local authority, particularly in regard to the domestic ratepayer and the additional burden that is eventually going to fall on his shoulders.
As my right hon. Friend himself said, this General Grant Order appears to follow the pattern of the operation of the present General Grant Order of 1959–60 and 1960–61. I cannot see that there are any new principles involved,

although, as my right hon. Friend explained to the House this afternoon, the formula of distribution of the global sum is slightly amended.
The estimates of expenditure by local authorities on services formerly aided by these specific grants were £833 million for 1961–62 and £869 million for 1962–63. But my right hon. Friend himself has fixed the assumed expenditure at the lower figures—as has already been quoted—of £818 million for 1961–62 and £851 million for 1962–63. After reading carefully the White Paper, I cannot see what my right hon. Friend's reasons are for these actual reductions.
I assume that as the actual expenditure for 1959–60 was some £707 million, which was less than the revised estimate of £723 million, this in itself might have had a bearing on my right hon. Friend's assumed reductions in the Order which we are debating this afternoon. With the 1959–60 actual expenditure underestimated by some £16 million, the Minister has now automatically assumed a further reduction of £15 million on 1961–62 and £18 million on 1962–63. Of course, these are only assumptions, and, as the hon. Member for Fulham has pointed out, these assumptions could be wide of their mark and we may subsequently be faced with considerable variations.
I decided to bring these figures down to the effect which they would have on my own borough of Croydon. I asked the borough treasurer what Croydon's grant was in 1960–61. I understand that it was £2,121,219. I gather it is estimated that for 1961–62 the grant is going to be increased by some £97,000 to £2,228,806. Croydon's total expenditure under the heading of these services for 1960–61 was £4,107,000 and for 1961–62 it is expected to be £4,442,000, which is an increase of £335,000, or 8·2 per cent., in the one year over the other.
Under this Order it would appear that Croydon will only get an extra £98,000 towards the increased cost for these services of £335,000. Therefore, Croydon will be compelled to find the difference of some £237,000, which is over 70 per cent. of the difference, from its ratepayers. If we assume that a 1d. rate in Croydon produces £20,500, this will mean asking the Croydon ratepayer for an extra 11½d. in the pound. I consider


that a very considerable additional burden for the Croydon ratepayer to have to bear.
The estimated increase in Croydon's expenditure for these services in the one year over the other is 8·2 per cent. That actually falls very closely into line with the average expected throughout the country of 8·3 per cent. Therefore, Croydon is not doing anything wrong in its average estimated expenditure. My right hon. Friend has assumed an increase of only 6·3 per cent. and the general grant will be increased by only 5·8 per cent., and Croydon's share of that is as low as 4·6 per cent.
This does not appear to me to be very satisfactory at all from the point of view of the Croydon ratepayer. The greatest burden of the required extra finance will undoubtedly fall on the shoulders of the domestic ratepayer who at the moment has to find 54 per cent. of Croydon's total rate bill, and that is against a figure mentioned by the Minister the other day of 47½ per cent. national average.
Under the new Rating and Valuation Bill, which we discussed a week ago, the Croydon domestic ratepayer may well eventually have to find as much as 62 per cent. of the total bill. The unfortunate reason why Croydon's percentage increase in the grant is less than the general percentage is due entirely to the operation of the distribution formula. Of course, as we know, it was devised to allocate the global sum on a basis of needs and resources of the sharing authorities.
A considerable time ago I spoke in the House on this very point. I then envisaged that Croydon would come out badly on the change-over. Unhappily, this forecast appears to be correct, because Croydon loses out on the school children factor of the supplementary grant. The figure of Croydon's school children per thousand of the population is below the national average, and the rate product per head of the population is above the national average.
I asked the borough treasurer what increase there would have been in Croydon's grant under the old percentage system. I am advised that against this new increased expenditure of some £335,000, under the old Order Croydon would have received £180,000 of that

amount—nearly 54 per cent. of it. But under the present Order Croydon will only get £98,000 of it, which is short of 30 per cent., and it will lose some £82,000, which represents 4d. on the rates.
I also remember forecasting this sad fact during the change-over of the grant system. The results are not really unexpected, as the Government's policy laid down in the original White Paper, and on which the new grant scheme was based in July 1957, foreshadowed a reduction in the proportion of local grant Government expenditure to be borne through the grants. That in turn means that the proportion of expenditure to be borne by the ratepayers will be higher.
What is the Government's intention with regard to the future of these general grants? I was virtually the only Conservative M.P. for years who advocated the abolition of industrial derating. In 1956 I seconded a Private Bill to try to achieve this. I listened to the Minister's opening speech on the Rating and Valuation Bill on 30th November. He made specific references to the general grants. He foresaw that through them local authorities might be deprived of some of their derating benefit. Industrial derating in Croydon costs the authority £328,000, which is a 1s. 2d. rate. I am most anxious that there should be no further curtailment of general grants because of the abolition of industrial derating. This is a vitally important issue.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Sir Gordon Touche): We cannot discuss the Rating and Valuation Bill in this debate.

Mr. Harris: I am not doing that, Sir Gordon. I am only following the pattern of the Minister and the hon. Member for Fulham, who referred to these very facts. It is obvious that one must be concerned about whether the present grant allocations under the Order will be maintained. I had hoped that I could have continued to discuss that for a few minutes.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: No. That has been referred to, but we obviously cannot discuss it in any detail.

Mr. Harris: I will try not to, Sir Gordon. I am just making the general observation that I am very concerned about the effect of future general grants upon Croydon ratepayers.
As the hon. Member for Fulham said, local authority expenditures under the headings in the Order are constantly rising. We are developing additional services. There are improvements all the time in the existing services enumerated. There are to be salary and wage increases and, although it is not covered in the Order, the hon. Member for Fulham referred to the fact that there will be the extra cost of the police to be borne very shortly, with which I am in full agreement.
If the Royal Commission's Report on Greater London is brought into being—and I trust it will not be, for it will indeed be a bad day for Croydon—then it will also cost the Croydon ratepayers more. If, in addition, the general grants are curtailed even further, as they have been in this case to Croydon's detriment, what will be the lot of the ratepayers? They have enough to find at present.
I hope that the Minister when he replies will give some kind of assurance that future general grants will not be curtailed because of the abolition of industrial derating. The Conservative Party has constantly urged people to buy their own homes. It has also concentrated specially on persuading young people to invest for the future in their homes. What we do under these general grants, particularly in the years ahead, will have a great bearing upon whether we can legitimately continue to encourage them to do this, bearing in mind the rate expenditure they will have to meet. I wish a formula could be found to ease their lot.
I need hardly remind the Minister that the services mentioned in the Order—education, local health and welfare, child care, road safety, planning, fire services, and even school crossing patrols—will constantly cost more. No one will dispute this. What possible comfort can the Government offer to present and future ratepayers, particularly those in Croydon? Can the Government, with the aid of these general grants, forecast any kind of rate stability? This seems almost impossible.
One thing that certainly shakes the public out of its general apathy towards local authority work is the constant increase in rate demands. If nothing else can be done to help to stabilise rates, I suggest that we need greater flexibility

in these future general grants. I appeal to the Government to think, not only of today or even in terms of 1961–62 or 1962–63, but to endeavour to look further ahead and tell us where we the ratepapers are really heading.

5.16 p.m.

Mrs. Joyce Butler: I echo the hope expressed by the hon. Member for Croydon, North-West (Mr. F. Harris) that the Minister will not in future years curtail the general grant. The hon. Gentleman will forgive me if I do not follow him any further on that point, because this debate on general grants is limited in its scope and yet covers a very wide field. That makes it extremely difficult to speak without getting out of order and still make the points which are necessary to be made in relation to the general grant order which is before us today.
I thank the Minister for his praise of local authorities in preparing their estimates on which the general grant has been based. I do not know whether he appreciates that, in addition to his own difficulties in dealing with these estimates at the Ministry, local authorities had very great difficulty in preparing their estimates for the Minister by 15th August this year. Normally they would not have been preparing their own estimates until the end of this year or the beginning of next year.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Housing and Local Government (Sir Keith Joseph): I hope the hon. Member for Fulham (Mr. M. Stewart) will note that, because he was understandably complaining about the short notice we were able to give in our turn.

Mrs. Butler: This is another point. Local authorities have co-operated tinder considerable difficulty, and I was pleased that the Minister acknowledged that. The General Grant Order has now been published, and the point my hon. Friend was making was that we have been given little time to weigh up its effects. I think that is very important and does not really alter the point I have made.
I want to confine myself almost entirely to paragraph 27 of the White Paper, which deals with the development of planning. This is a very special


problem under the general grant procedure. I quote what the Minister says in that paragraph:
The expenditure is incurred mainly in the acquisition, clearing and preliminary development of areas of bad layout or obsolete development which are being cleared and redeveloped by the local authorities and of land needed to provide more public open space. It consists mainly of loan charges on capital expenditure, whether incurred currently or in earlier years, after allowance has been made for the value of the land on which redevelopment has been completed. There was steady progress during the first general grant period, though less than expected. …
It then goes on to talk about provision being made for increases in future schemes.
A point that is very relevant to this discussion is why redevelopment was less than expected in the first grant period. The Minister will no doubt know more of the reasons for that than a back bencher can possibly know. There is no doubt as to the need. As my hon. Friend the Member for Fulham (Mr. M. Stewart) said, we are all agreed that the redevelopment of blighted areas is a prime necessity at present. It is one of the things on which town planners, architects, social workers and very many other experts are agreed. It has been said that today we are having to pay the social cost of the industrial revolution by having to redevelop blighted areas.
The need being so great, it is very difficult to understand why progress has been so slow. I am quite certain in my own mind that one of the reasons is the difficulty of the financial side of redevelopment. It has already been said that redevelopment involves very high costs, very largely due, among other things, to the increased cost of land. But, in addition to that increased cost, there are difficulties in the general grant arrangements—and it is to those that I want particularly to refer—and difficulties arising from uncertainty about any other form of financial help for local authorities that want to engage in redevelopment.
The Minister will know that the financial arrangements for redevelopment are extremely complex. It would be safe to say that in an area like Middlesex, with which I am most familiar—but this is probably true over a large part of southern England—the increase in the

cost of housing land has been about 300 per cent. as between 1958 and 1960. That is a very large increase to a local authority considering redevelopment. Although I am referring to housing land, and it is always maintained that housing costs must cover themselves, local authorities will hesitate very considerably before undertaking redevelopment when faced with such increased land costs.
The county boroughs have a proportion of the general grant for planning purposes. They can use that as they wish. If they wish to undertake central redevelopment they can use the grant for that purpose. The county districts cannot do that. That is an important point, because it should not be supposed that redevelopment of blighted areas is necessary only in the large cities that are county boroughs. There are a great many districts—non-county boroughs—not only in Middlesex but in Lancashire and the North, and in southern England—where redevelopment is vitally necessary.
The authorities concerned have no means of ensuring that they have a proportion of the general grant to help them in their redevelopment. The general grant goes to the county authority, not to the non-county authorities that are actually carrying out the redevelopment—except by grace of the county authority. There is no mechanism or formula or means of ensuring that they get the amount of the general grant that the Minister says he has set aside for this essential development and which goes to the county boroughs and counties for that purpose. These are very important matters, because we cannot afford to allow local authorities to let up in the essential task of redevelopment.
Another factor is the uncertainty of getting other grants. For many authorities the expensive site subsidy that the Minister can make to local authorities that are building on very expensive sites is again an uncertain grant. The ceiling of that subsidy is in a state of fluidity, if I can put it that way, and many authorities have no idea what that ceiling will be. It is asking a very great deal of a local authority, uncertain of getting any help from the general grant paid to the county authority, uncertain of the ceiling of the expensive-site subsidy, and faced with increased land costs and all


its other difficulties, to expect it to say, "We will undertake a scheme of comprehensive redevelopment which will cost a very great deal and will extend over a period of years."
I know that representations have been made to the Minister on that matter, and I ask him to consider some of the consequences. One, I have already indicated—local authorities just will not redevelop their obsolete areas. They will feel that they cannot possibly do it, so they will not do a job that someone has to tackle if the areas are not to degenerate very quickly and so become slum-clearance problems.
The other alternative is that local authorities will proceed with redevelopment but, instead of building the houses that they otherwise would have built, they will see how they can bring in more commercial development to help meet the high cost of the scheme. If that were extended on any scale at all it would make nonsense of our ideas of planning. The Minister has only to visualise a ring of, say, the boroughs of Middlesex, where they have worn-out mixed areas in which they have planned a certain amount of open space, some allotments, houses, and just a few shops to serve the area. If they are to change their schemes—put in a large amount of commercial development, perhaps, cutting out the open spaces and cutting down the houses—it will make nonsense of any peal planning in those areas.
There will be a temptation to many authorities to do that when they redevelop, in order to try to cover the cost of their schemes. If they do so, there will be an increase of employment in some areas where the Minister and many of us are very anxious to reduce employment because, if we increase commerce instead of housing, we do just that.
More important than all this is the effect that it will have on the overall supply of building land for houses. We are being told on all sides, particularly by private developers, that there is a shortage of building land for houses. It is then said, "There is no shortage—look at the worn-out areas of our towns and cities. We can there build—and build, perhaps, at higher densities."
Those areas are there to be developed, but the commercial developers, in the main, are not interested in those areas because a sufficient profit cannot be made out of them. They cannot see themselves getting an economic return from housing redevelopment. The local authorities are the people who must do that and, if they do not, we put terrific pressure on virgin building land and on green belts, whilst these areas which obviously should be used for housing are being allowed to run down and are not being redeveloped as they should.
I have spoken at some length about one particular aspect of the general grant because the Minister indicates in paragraph 27 of the White Paper that he is priming the pump. He says that he has made a substantial increase in provision for public open spaces and also for redevelopment schemes. If he is priming the pump, he should make quite sure that he primes the right pump. From the point of view of the non-county boroughs, to put money into the funds of county authorities with no kind of assurance that it will come to the non-county boroughs for redevelopment is really not a satisfactory way of handling the matter at all.
From the county angle, the county in its planning expenditure covers such important things as the acquisition of non-conforming industries. To take my own county again, Middlesex County Council is planning to spend £500,000, I think, this year on the acquisition of non-conforming industries and to increase it to £700,000 next year. This is very important, and I do not believe that any non-county borough in Middlesex would grudge that money being spent. Indeed, they would like a great deal more to be spent on the acquisition of non-conforming industries. But the more Middlesex spends on that, the less it will have available to pass on to the non-county boroughs in Middlesex and the county districts which want to undertake redevelopment.
This is the vicious circle in which planning finance is at the moment. I hope the Minister will look at the matter very carefully, not riding away from the problem by saying that he will increase the amount allocated to town and country planning. It may help some authorities, the county boroughs, but it will not help


the county districts unless he can find some means of ensuring that they do receive a proportion of it without detriment to county planning needs.
The Minister will remember that the old formula, from which he departed when he introduced the general grant, of paying local authorities 50 per cent. of their loss on their planning account for redevelopment of blighted areas was a very simple and straightforward one and, when they planned redevelopment, they knew that they would have that, and, therefore, they were able to look ahead over a period of years and bring in redevelopment schemes which they had some hope of bringing to fruition. Today, local authorities face all the difficulties I have mentioned and, moreover, they face the possibility of starting on a scheme which may be intended to cover 20 years and then wondering whether, at the and of five years, let us say, they will be able to continue the scheme to the very end because costs are rising, the difficulties are so burdensome and the uncertainty is so great.
I ask the Minister to consider whether, since he pays housing subsidies direct to local housing authorities, he might in the case of redevelopment find a means of ensuring that local authorities do receive a planning grant direct so that it goes to both counties and non-county boroughs in accordance with the planning work which they are doing.
That is all I have to say. I have limited my remarks to one aspect of the problem, but it is an aspect which very often tends to be overlooked in the debates. Moreover, it is something which, I think, will become of increasing importance. I ask the Minister to examine the points I have made. If he cannot answer today and offer a means of meeting the problem, I hope he will discuss the matter again with the local authority associations and the people most concerned with a view to finding a way out of the difficulty.

5.34 p.m.

Mr. Mark Woodnutt: For a minute or two I wish to follow the hon. Member for Fulham (Mr. M. Stewart) and my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, North-West (Mr. F. Harris) in their expression of concern lest it be the Minister's intention to manipulate

the general grant and shift the burden of local authority expenditure from the taxpayer to the ratepayer. I share that concern, although I confess that I can see no evidence from his record that that is my right hon. Friend's intention. Should it be his intention, I must warn him that I would be one of those on these benches who would resist any action of that sort, because I think that the burden on the ratepayer is already heavy enough.
I have risen to criticise the General Grant Order before us today, but in so doing I wish to make it quite clear that I am not against the general grant in principle. The Minister has told us that in the aggregate authorities will receive as great a percentage under this general grant as they did hitherto under the percentage grant. I wish merely to protest against the adverse effect it has on some authorities, including my own county of the Isle of Wight. I realise that the Isle of Wight is one of a small minority affected in this way, but for that very reason I feel that something should have been done to give relief.
A week ago last Sunday, the Leader of the Opposition and his hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen (Dr. King) visited my constituency on one of their Marathon tours and stayed long enough for the hon. Member for Itchen to inform my constituents that I had denounced the block grant in the House—meaning, of course, the general grant—and had then voted for it. I wish again to make the matter quite clear. I am not against the principle of the grant. I wish to quote from HANSARD of 25th February this year, where I am reported as having said in that debate:
I am satisfied that for the country as a whole the general grant system is preferable to the old system of percentage grants It has the merit of enabling the Minister to budget for a fixed amount of expenditure, and it should stop any tendency on the part of local authorities"—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 25th February, 1960; Vol. 618, c. 611.]

Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Sir Gordon Touche): I must remind the hon. Member of the Ruling given by Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Woodnutt: I am sorry, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, but I am leading into the subject of this General Grant Order as I wish to take this opportunity to correct a misstatement made by the


Leader of the Opposition and his hon. Friend in my constituency which received massive publicity.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: Those circumstances do not make it in order.

Mr. Woodnutt: I beg your pardon, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. I am not very well versed in the procedure of the House since I have not been here very long. I shall abide by your Ruling.
Although the grant is sound for the country as a whole, it has an adverse effect on some authorities. The system as a whole is good. It enables each authority to know precisely to what figure it must budget.
When we consider local authorities with declining populations, to which reference has already been made by the hon. Member for Fulham, we do not have to look far to realise that they are adversely affected compared with other authorities. During the debate last February, I suggested to my right hon. Friend that he should introduce a new factor into the formula in order to give extra money to authorities with a slightly declining population. I am very pleased to see that he has done that, but the outcome is a little ironic. I was one of the people to press for this change, and my local authority, through its local authority association, pressed for it; but unfortunately, my local authority does not benefit one iota from the adjustment which my right hon. Friend has made in paragraph 9. The reason is that my right hon. Friend relates the decline in population of 1 per cent. to the year 1940, twenty years ago.
The Isle of Wight had a smaller population in 1940 than in 1960. Although our population is declining year by year—the reduction was 510 last year—we do not get any benefit from this extra provision which the Minister has included in the Order. Why has he chosen twenty years? Why not five, ten or thirty years? The year 1940, when we were right at the beginning of the war and circumstances were exceptional, does not seem to be a good year to take as a basis. I suggest that my right hon. Friend would be much wiser to compare the population year by year from the date when he first introduced the general grant.
I want to look a little more closely at the effect a declining population has on some authorities. The population of England and Wales, as a whole has been steadily rising since the end of the First World War. In only two years was there a decrease—1941 and 1951. The increase in England and Wales, between 1958 and 1959 was no less than 277,000. That is an increase of over ·6 per cent. I do not know the figures for 1959 to 1960 because they have not yet been published, but I would think that, on the average of the past few years, we can safely assume that the population of England and Wales is still steadily increasing by ·5 per cent. per annum.
We in the Isle of Wight are suffering from a steadily declining population. Other local authorities are affected in the same way. The drop from 1959 to 1960 was ·5 per cent., the same percentage by which the population of the rest of the nation in aggregate increased. Not only does an authority in the position of the Isle of Wight receive grant on a smaller number of people than the previous year, but it does not receive the normal increase which most authorities receive based on their increased population. No doubt it could be argued that when there are less people there are less services and facilities to provide and, therefore, the costs are less. But that is not so.
The fall in expenditure in any concern, whether it is a business or local authority, is not related to the fall in population. There are items which accountants call fixed overheads which already apply. As my right hon. Friend said in opening the debate, if there is a small drop in population we cannot shut down a school or an old people's home. We cannot discharge any staff. The same staff is required to run the old people's home and the schools. Although we have a decline in population, we certainly do not have a reduction in expenditure. It is unreasonable not to make an allowance for that fact. If an authority has a slightly declining population and each year the amount of the grant in aggregate is fixed, it must mean that the authorities with the declining populations will, year by year, receive a smaller proportion of the total amount of money available.
I have worked out the figures for the Isle of Wight. Whereas the percentage grant for the rest of the country expressed as a percentage to relevant expenditure is 55·5 per cent., for the Isle of Wight it is as low as 48·26 per cent. That is a very wide difference, and, as things are and as year succeeds year, it will get progressively larger. It must be borne in mind that authorities with declining populations do not get the normal increase in the product of a 1d. rate which can be expected in other authorities. They therefore lose both ways.
In my authority we are doing the best we can to increase our population. We have one of the highest birth rates in the country and one of the lowest death rates, but the trouble is that there are not enough opportunities for our young people and they leave the island. We have even agreed with the Home Office that we should have yet a third prison, in Newport. I am told that the prison population counts in calculating the general grant.
Finally, I plead with my right hon. Friend to look at the matter again. As the chairman of the finance committee in the Isle of Wight, I feel so strongly about the matter that I should not have supported the Government this evening had there been a Division. I am most disappointed that nothing has been done about this matter. I suggest to my right hon. Friend that, as an alternative to adjusting the general grant for declining population over the last three years, he might work out each year the figures as presented today and then, wherever a local authority has a grant which is less as a percentage to its total expenditure than the average for the country, it should be made up to that average. That would go a long way towards helping authorities which are so adversely affected by this formula.

5.47 p.m.

Mr. Frederick Willey: I am afraid that I cannot oblige the hon. Member for the Isle of Wight (Mr. Woodnutt) by provoking a Division so that he can declare his neutrality. I do not intend to speak long in view of the admirably lucid speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Fulham (Mr. M. Stewart). I immediately call in aid hon.

Members' indulgence, because this is the first time that I have spoken from this Box on this subject. I do this earnestly because I do not claim to be in any way adept in mathematics.
I wish immediately to reinforce the two complaints which my hon. Friend made, because they have affected the course of the debate. It is particularly unfortunate that the debate has taken place so soon after the laying of the Order. This is a matter on which we ought properly to have been able to seek the advice of local authorities and their associations. I say this with great respect, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, but another difficulty is that there has been uncertainty about the form which the debate should take. I will not endeavour to deal with the transitional Regulations.
I turn to Section 15 of the Local Government Act, 1958, but I can claim to have read it only a few times and I apologise to the House for not having noticed that it ended with a rhyming couplet. This is obviously a complicated and difficult matter with which to deal.
On the major Order, we have before us a White Paper to which I will make reference. Some hon. Members have been in doubt about how far they might refer to the White Paper in developing points on the Order itself. I hope that this is a matter which will receive the attention of the Government. This is an occasion on which there should be a full debate on the position of local authorities and the central Government.
I do not mind the White Paper. It is what is known in the advertising world as a "puff". It does not give us very much information. In so far as it does give information, it puts us on inquiry for further information. Two particular respects in which the White Paper is lacking information are the points which my hon. Friend the Member for Fulham developed in the further point he made about the Order. There is a reference to the discussions between the local authorities and the central Government. In the sixth paragraph, we are told that the estimates of local authorities have
been examined closely in the several Departments".
We should like to know more about the procedure of examination and about the explanation of the over-estimate or under-spending in the previous year.
This is a disturbing matter. I am concerned not so much in mathematics as in the content of the services. If it was estimated that desirable work should be undertaken and it has net been undertaken, the Minister should not be smug and complacent about it.
When we come to the present estimates which we are now considering, one of the difficulties is that the right hon. Gentleman did not explain how the revision of estimates was arrived at. I am rather suspicious about this. I may be wrong—I am simply hazarding a guess in the absence of information—but on the face of it, it looks as though the Minister was in a position to say that the overall estimates were over-estimates on the previous occasion and they are being made realistic by being written down by a similar amount. That would make something undesirable doubly undesirable.
We are concerned here with services which both sides of the House would want to encourage. Having heard this brief discussion on these Statutory Instruments, it seems to me that one of the disadvantages of this procedure is that we get a static conception of the social services as they are provided by the local authorities. This particularly concerns the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Education, because it affects education. The under-spending I have mentioned in fact was largely in the hon. Gentleman's Department.
Last week, I had the pleasure of hearing the hon. Gentleman replying to a fierce bipartisan attack upon him by hon. Members who represented Cornish constituencies. My impression was that the hon. Gentleman was devoted to the language of priorities. He would have encouraged the late Aneurin Bevan. The flaw, however—and this seems to me to be the flaw in our approach to these Statutory Instruments—was that the hon. Gentleman was not so concerned with the overriding priority which expenditure on education should have in the country as a whole.
After hearing the Minister of Housing and Local Government, there seems to be an absorbing interest, which we welcome—I have no doubt of the right hon. Gentleman's impartiality—of striking the right priorities within a particular service, but we are not conscious

of the overriding priority which a service should have in the national resources. That is what disturbs me in a debate like this.
I should have expected a more ambitious approach rather than the approach we have had so far, that we have a rate of growth and that because we have a rate of growth, it must be satisfactory. I assure the right hon. Gentleman that I have no intention of criticising the Government solely on the ground that they are cutting expenditure. My criticism is that they are not increasing these expenditures sufficiently. This is brought out by the White Paper, which is a "puff" for the Order. The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Education will agree with the reference here to "increased expenditure in all parts of the service" and to "continued progress in providing new schools".
I have already entered the rider about not being a good mathematician. I enter the further rider that I am breaking new ground, However, I think I can see the wood; I may be absorbed in the trees later. If we look to educational building, because these priorities have exercised themselves within an inadequate overriding priority, it seems to me that the achievements of the Ministry of Education in the field of further education have led to a slowing down in the rate of providing new places in schools.
I am concerned about the rate of growth. What, therefore, concerns me is that we have a number of priorities. They are absolute priorities. These ought to flower in their own virtue. They ought not to be affected because they are too closely contained. That is my argument against the present formula. It might not be an argument for reducing expenditure, but it is a procedure which, obviously, is readily susceptible to containment within present expenditures.
I do not intend to run through the various developments in education referred to in the White Paper, but the same point could be made on the various matters that we are considering. In the same paragraph, for instance, there is a reference to the education of sub-normal children. My hon. Friend the Member for Fulham made a dramatic reference to this problem. I give credit to the Government that they have increased the


work we are doing. What disturbs me is the number of sub-normal children who are still awaiting places in special schools. The number is almost as large as it was before. It has, indeed, been reduced, but it has not been dramatically reduced.
I am concerned about the problem that remains. I am not exaggerating this as being a simple problem. Once we go into priorities, we are concerned with difficult problems, but I should like attention to be concentrated the whole time on, for instance, not the advance that has been made, but, at the end of the day, the inadequacy of that advance because there are still far too many subnormal children who are not being properly looked after. That is my broad feeling about this approach. To put it simply, it seems that the Government claim that we have a Welfare State with which we can be absolutely satisfied. I think that we have a Welfare State which is inadequate even in comparison with many other comparable countries.
If we turn from that broad question to the rate of growth—it is significant that we do not get this in the White Paper—we do not get the criterion of growth or the factors which put that growth in its proper perspective. We are dealing with developments in education. The Minister of Education talks about having won the battle of the "bulge" and now fighting the battle for quality. When we have these figures for increased expenditure on education, however, we are not told how they are related to the increased school population. This is relevant if we are discussing quality.
Again, we have not had the approach that my hon. Friend touched upon. To be fair, it is true that the right hon. Gentleman mentioned this as a generalisation, but if we are concerned with the rate of growth we are also concerned with how far the apparent rate of growth is a false rate of growth because of increased costs. My hon. Friend the Member for Wood Green (Mrs. Butler) raised this point particularly in connection with town planning. I should have thought, on the face of it, that we have little more here than the same static conception of these services. The Minister is taking pride in this day and age that he is not cutting the social services,

and no more than that. Even if we are to take an unambitious view, I should have liked to have a relationship established between the percentage of resources that we are devoting to education and other services with the growth of the gross national product or to use the jargon—the G.N.P.
At this late stage in the debate I do not want to broaden it unduly, but we have had a discussion on these Orders and all that the right hon. Gentleman can say is that things are not as bad as some people have prophesied that they would be. This is not a very enlightened view for a right hon. Gentleman in his position. I should like to feel that there was a drive from the central Government to see that we provide for the educational and other services as adequately as we can and that we feel through the whole length of these services dissatisfaction with their broad inadequacy. When we are living in a world which is changing rapidly we have to keep pace with it. This is what the right hon. Gentleman has not done and this is what is disappointing about the Government's approach.
The right hon. Gentleman, for all I know, may be facing real difficulties. I have touched upon under-spending. It may be that we have a shortage of trained professional personnel to carry on the job. If we have, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Education has a bigger task still. Two illustrations come to my mind. A good deal of attention has been paid recently to the machine-tool industry. This is very much the responsibility of the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Education. At the Geneva talks on nuclear disarmament we had to send outside the United Kingdom for experts to advise us. These are very serious but very simple illustrations which unfortunately could be repeated a hundredfold.
It is for this reason that in education we must get rid of the complacency behind which the Government hide. We want services which are not only as good as the people warrant but as the circumstances demand.

6.5 p.m.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Housing and Local Government (Sir Keith Joseph): I doubt whether


the House ought to give a person at the Despatch Box for such a short time so many points to answer. I face the House with a large number of notes about the queries raised and I shall do my best to deal with them. Perhaps it would be helpful if I dealt first with the general question, and then went on to comments and criticisms of the general grant, then to comments on the transitional arrangements, then to the distribution formula—and it is that formula which several hon. Members have attacked in connection with their own constituencies—and finally returned to the general theme.
First, the hon. Member for Fulham (Mr. M. Stewart), I think very legitimately, complained that the House had been given rather short commons on the amount of time available in which to analyse these very difficult and esoteric matters. The House will realise that we have been in difficulty. As the hon. Lady the Member for Wood Green (Mrs. Butler) explained, the local authorities have been extremely co-operative in preparing estimates ahead so early in the year at my right hon. Friend's request, and they have to report back to their elected members after their own experts on the Working Party have analysed all the figures that have to be sifted. Nevertheless, my right hon. Friend accepts that the House needs as much time as can be arranged to study these technical matters and we shall do all we can to allow a longer time in future.
The hon. Member for Fulham went on to dispute my right hon. Friend's claim that general grant, as opposed to specific grant, enables the country to see more clearly and further ahead. He prayed in aid the fact that we were forced last year to come and ask for an increase in the general grant. I am sure that the hon. Member will agree that he would have had far more reason to complain if we had not come back for more. The amount of increase represented only 2 per cent. to 3 per cent. of the relevant expenditure, and I think that it is true that the present planned, realistic forecast of expenditure, and of grant towards that expenditure, brings into control all these massive expenses of the local authorities much more cogently than ever before.
I feel that the hon. Member for Fulham, in a speech that was full of meat, made one cardinal error throughout and I shall return to this several times. He spoke as if the rate services could be considered and talked about in total isolation. But, as we all know, although we cannot discuss these implications today, rate services are only part of the total general picture in which enter equally strongly the rates themselves, taxes, national resources in terms of skilled and unskilled human beings, and all the resources that go to make production and services possible. That would be the major criticism that I have to make of the hon. Member's speech and I should like to come back to it as we go through the rest of the debate.
My hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, North-West (Mr. F. Harris) asked whether the Government could declare loud and clear the future of rates, the future facing the ratepayer, and the future of the general grant. I really think that he is asking me to be far more far-sighted than any human being can be expected to be. Who can predict the precise level of taxes, of the balance of payments and of the productivity of our national resources? All I can tell my hon. Friend is that the Government are determined that the local authorities shall be given the means to conduct independent and vigorous services for their communities backed by substantial help from the taxpayer. I am sorry that I cannot say more. I am sure that on reflection my hon. Friends would agree it would be more than a human being could do.

Mr. F. Harris: My hon. Friend can predict that rates will constantly go up, but there is always the possibility of taxes going down.

Sir K. Joseph: I am not prepared to say that rates will constantly go up. In the debate on the Rating and Valuation Bill I went so far as to say that in the immediate future, with the education and health services dramatically expanding, it is probable that rates will go up, but that is in the immediate future. In the more distant future there are all sorts of other facts to be taken into account, and I hope to deal with some of them. There is, for example, the improvement in the management and efficiency of


local authorities which is already well under way.
The hon. Member for Fulham said that the local authorities make their proposals for what they want to spend and then the Ministry cuts them down. I want to analyse that statement. What happens is that local authorities are invited freely to forecast what they want and intend to do over the next grant period. These forecasts are examined critically and constructively by the Departments concerned in order to see, and only in order to see, that the resources to carry out these programmes can realistically be depended upon.
It would be folly if the Government were to permit more to be undertaken in theory than could possibly be carried out without the grossest sort of inflation. As a result of this examination, a reduction is arrived at. If possible, that reduction should be agreed. On this occasion it was an agreed reduction—a reduction agreed with the local authority associations as representing a realistic assessment of the overestimate made by way of optimism or by way of an understandable lack of knowledge of all the national figures by the individual local authorities.

Mr. M. Stewart: The hon. Gentleman says that it was an agreed reduction. What would have happened if the local authorities had not agreed to it?

Sir K. Joseph: This is a process of mutual persuasion. We are dealing not with a decision of the Government—

Mr. Stewart: The hon. Member is evading the issue.

Sir K. Joseph: I am not. We are dealing with the assessment of what resources will be available. One side has to succeed in persuading the other on what is largely an objective matter. I am not evading the point. I will return to it in a moment.
This process need not necessarily lead to a reduction. It is conceivable that local authorities could have underestimated the resources available. On this occasion they overestimated by a sum which they later agreed was equivalent to £21 million for the next grant year and £23 million for the second grant year. Then my right hon. Friend

added a certain amount of money in order to cover the foreseeable and measurable increase in cost which had already become apparent since 30th June, 1960, when the local authorities had prepared their programmes. That add-back was roughly £6 million for each of the two grant years.
The hon. Gentleman also asked whether we would have to return to the House for an increase Order for the new grant period, as we did in the last. I cannot predict that, but the Government will watch any relevant burdens that fall upon local authorities—burdens that were not predictable or measurable on 30th November last, and, if it becomes necessary, will return to the House for an increase Order.
The hon. Gentleman went on, rather ungraciously, I thought, to complain that a conclusive grant paid to any local authority differs from the estimated grant. It must do. This is a very slow and complex operation. As he will realise, a local authority needs to know, from early in the grant period, approximately the scale of grant it can expect from the taxpayer in order to assess its own programme and rates.
The grant system is based on detailed statistics of population, of school children, and all the other factors—only roads remain tolerably constant in length—that are actually available at the time of calculation. The grant itself, when it comes finally to be adjusted, takes account of the actual statistics during the relevant year for the grant. So there has to be an adjustment. But my right hon. Friend will gladly consider the suggestion made by the hon. Member, though I think it might complicate matters, of publishing a comparison, so that the House can see this adjustment between the estimated grant and the actual grant.
The hon. Lady the Member for Wood Green made two main points, with one of which I cannot deal. She said, rightly, that district councils are not entitled to receive direct any general grant on planning grounds, but they can receive a discretionary contribution from county councils. This would need legislation to alter. I cannot give any other answer than that today.
She went on to suggest that the Government were discouraging planning.


The fact that approved planning expenditure—the figures are on pages 7 and 8 of the White Paper—is developing and going up more than three times before the end of the new grant period, should be sufficient indication that this is not so. What both she and the hon. Member for Fulham did not, perhaps, sufficiently take into account, was that the figures on page 10 of the White Paper are largely accounted for by interest payments. One would have to capitalise that figure to arrive at total expenditure on planning purposes.

Mrs. Butler: The hon. Gentleman will appreciate that the local authorities estimate for next year of the amount they will spend is £2 million less than they spent in the current year. That figure is from the White Paper on Public Investment. It would seem, therefore, that they are to spend less. I was assuming that the Government's addition was in order to try to encourage them to do more rather than an earnest that they would do more.

Sir K. Joseph: We must be careful not to confuse the service of capital with capital payments. I suspect that the hon. Lady is confusing the two. There is no desire by the Government to discourage these planning activities, and the figures in the White Paper have been agreed with the local authority associations.
The hon. Member for Fulham claimed that local authority expenditure had increased by 23 per cent. between 1959 and 1963, whereas the general grant had limped behind and was only increasing by 17½ per cent.

Mr. M. Stewart: I said, desired expenditure.

Sir K. Joseph: I agree. Desired expenditure, he said, had increased by 23 per cent. while the general grant was increasing by only 17½ per cent. But he is not comparing like with like. His figure of 23 per cent. is the result of comparing the near actual expenditure of local authorities in 1959–60 with estimated expenditure for 1962–63. The jump from estimate to estimate—from desired expenditure to desired expenditure—from 1959 to 1962, was 17½ per cent., which is the same as the jump in the general grant. His point, though an excellent try, was not quite successful.
The hon. Member said that local authorities are under no bond whatsoever to spend what is in their estimates. That may be so. It is true that they are under no contract to the Government to spend the precise figures in their estimates, but they realise that their future figures are not likely to be treated with the credit they receive now if they continually and substantially fail to attempt to carry out the development represented by the estimates they give to my right hon. Friend.
The hon. Member went on to say that the procedure we are discussing gives a prize to an economising or, as he said, skimping local authority, and puts the burden on the vigorous one. That is not complimentary to local authorities. They operate under the sanction of public opinion. Ratepayers are users of services as well as payers of rates, and the purpose of this procedure is that, though the adequate operation of these services is the Government's declared policy, the initiative for the exact performance of that policy should be left to local authorities, with the pressure available from the Minister if it should be necessary to supplement the sanction of the elector.
The hon. Member for Fulham seems constantly to forget that both sides of the House are fervent in their pursuit of the independence of local authorities. He seems also to forget that taxpayers need to be safeguarded as much as ratepayers are, and that the House has to pay heed to them as well. He also forgets that the general grant paid to local authorities is not directly related to their own expenditure. It follows from the present arrangement that wise and efficient administration can often show a saving and that by this arrangement that saving is left with the ratepayer.
The rather grudging acceptance by the hon. Member for Sunderland, North (Mr. Willey) of the continually rising trend in general grant and local authority expenditure saves me from making that point again. But, as the hon. Member for Fulham criticised the rising trend of expenditure, because, he said, in the second grant year the proportionate rise would not be as much as in the first grant year, I must remind him that we are helping local authorities


to do what they want to do and are only correcting their optimism where it departs from probability.
In a very effective sentence, the hon. Member for Fulham said that we should not take credit for the failure of local authorities to do the work because there were no skilled people to carry it out. He called upon my right hon. Friend to regret such inability by local authorities to carry out work because there were not the people available to do it, but he forgot that Ministers do not operate in vacuums. My right hon. Friend has to accept that his own interests and the interests of local authorities are neither unique nor paramount.
We are privileged to live in a fully employed economy and it is true that more skill is needed, but more skill must always be needed for a progressing and expanding economy. It is true, as the hon. Member for Sunderland, North observed, that my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Education is sitting here because of the passionate concern of the Minister of Education in educational services provided by local authorities. It is because of that very need for more skill, so as to enable the whole country to get more wealth, that this part of the General Grant Order is made. I am sure that my right hon. Friend would like there to be more skilled people so that more work could be undertaken, but the bulk of the money which we are today debating will go to increase the number of skilled and educated people.
The hon. Member for Fulham went on to criticise the Government's interest rate policy. The general grant takes account of any relevant expenditure in interest payments, whether increased or decreased. I do not wish to shirk the issue and I hope that the House will not shirk the issue, but if it is national policy to avoid inflation, as it must be, and if it is national policy to avoid overloading the economy, as it must be, then local authorities cannot opt out. The interest rate, which is meant to avoid inflation, must bite on them as it bites on all. That seems to be another major factor of which the hon. Member for Fulham did not take account.
He and the hon. Lady the Member for Wood Green, in their comments on

the planning elements in the general grant, spoke as if city centre redevelopment should depend upon some contribution from the taxpayer. I have already commented on the fact that the planning element is largely made up of the service of capital, but I remind them that, in answer to a Question only a few weeks ago, I said that my right hon. Friend was considering whether local authorities needed to be enabled to capitalise or defer interest expenditure on central area redevelopment which should, by hypothesis, be profitable development, and to see whether more help should be given to them by that means.
The House has rightly shown considerable interest in the health part of this general grant, and my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Health has been listening to the debate throughout. I think that it is known to hon. Members that my right hon. Friend the Minister of Health has, from the first day he took up his office, declared his bias in favour, within the National Health Service, of developing the services appropriate to the treatment of mental illness. He has declared that not once, but many times. It is not therefore surprising that I am able to tell the House that no reduction whatever has been made in local authorities' desired development of mental health services. The only limitation so far as we are aware is strictly that of the people and skills available.
In the same way, I am able to answer a question about the education of the handicapped. My hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Education tells me that there is an increase of no less than 20 per cent. in money terms, which nowadays is in real terms, of planned expenditure for 1962–63 as compared with that for 1959–60.
The hon. Member for Sunderland, North asked whether all these figures could be expressed as a fraction of the gross national product. He will remember that Mr. Abel Smith and Professor Titmuss took two years to work out that sum for the National Health Service, and the hon. Member has asked me to do it for all these different parts of local authority expenditure. I think that his point was valid, but I doubt if that work could be done reliably in addition to all


the other labour which has to be undertaken.
I think that I have answered all the main criticisms, comments and suggestions about the general grant itself, and I now want to deal with the transitional arrangements. I was asked what the Government intended to do about transitional arrangements. All I can say in answer is that my right hon. Friend has agreed with the local authority associations that the whole situation of the transitional arrangements shall be reviewed when we know much more about the results of the rating revaluation and rerating which is to occur in 1962–63.
My hon. Friend the Member for the Isle of Wight (Mr. Woodnutt) and my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, North-West made some understandable constituency comments in connection with the distribution formula. All those hon. Members who have spoken have agreed in welcoming the slight adjustments which my right hon. Friend has made in favour of areas with declining populations and in favour of areas with more than the average number of children and elderly people.
I was asked by my hon. Friend the Member for the Isle of Wight why the distribution formula depended on a period of twenty years. He asked why it should not be ton or thirty years. The fact is that this is an optimum decided by all the local authority interests concerned as represented on the Working Party, and it was laid down in 1958 that there should be just the one period and we cannot choose differing periods under the present legislation. All the differing interests on the Local Authority Working Party chose the period of twenty years as the highest common factor for all the interests concerned.

Mr. Woodnutt: Will my hon. Friend not agree that a local authority might have had a declining population over the past ten years, whereas twenty years ago its population might well have been much less than it is today, and that such a situation might create hardship?

Sir K. Joseph: I apologise for not being able to answer that question shortly, and I hope that I shall be excused if I have to answer at some length, because these problems are very difficult. They were fully discussed by

the Working Party. The Isle of Wight appears to fall between two stools.
If it does not have an expanding population, it does not get the benefit of the larger number of heads on which to receive grant. If it does not have a declining population, it does not get the solace available under the distribution formula for a declining population. A static population can benefit only from a small part of the distribution formula. I will not give a quick answer to what my hon. Friend has said, but my right hon. Friend will consider his argument, although his own solution is not practicable.
The hon. Member for Fulham quoted five authorities which had had substantial declines of population over the last few years and asked whether they would be helped by the twenty-year qualification. Of these five, four already qualify under present arrangements for the declining population element.
My hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, North-West raised some difficult constituency matters. It is true that Croydon's population and school children are not increasing by as much as the average, and it follows that its share of the grant must inevitably be smaller, but it may be some consolation to my hon. Friend to know that, in fact, Croydon is benefiting from the financial changes made by the 1958 Act and is probably the equivalent of a 3d. rate more than it would have had under the old system of grant.
I apologise for having taken so long. I want to make only a couple of final points of general interest. We have spent most of today discussing expenditure and it is fair to the local authorities to say that they are doing all they can to get more value for money by using modern management technique. Many local authorities are using machine accounting. In fact, I believe that mechanical accounting is becoming almost normal among local authorities. Many local authorities are following those pioneers who engaged organisation and methods experts, or employed them themselves. Many local authorities are using techniques of work measurement and method study. Many local authorities are studying with benefit the statistics produced by the Institute of Municipal Treasurers and Accountants. These are


all encouraging trends, particularly when we are dealing with such large sums.
We are entering the second period of the new general grant, with higher grants in real terms in each year. To ease the change from the old specific grant system we have transitional arrangements, compensating the minority of losers by a levy from the gainers, but on a diminishing scale. We still retain, but further diminish, the old rate product deduction factor, which stems from education. The distribution formula seeks to do justice to all the authorities involved. Superimposed on all this is the system of rate deficiency grants whereby the Exchequer stands in for the notional absent ratepayer in local authorities below average 1d. rate product in relation to population. As a result of all this, the taxpayer is contributing over half of all net rate expenditure.
This whole elaborate system, which seeks to serve the interests simultaneously of taxpayer and ratepayer—who are generally the same person paying from the same pocket but with slightly more local interest in the case of the ratepayer—faces the unpredictable implications of the major changes in rating by 1963. This is not the time, therefore, to adjust the distribution formula more than marginally. We have made such adjustments to help particularly areas of declining population and areas where there are more than average elderly and young.
The general grant is serving its purpose. Local authority associations are not questioning the estimates of relevant expenditure, which allow realistically for considerable planned development in line with Government policy. The taxpayer is bearing his part while local authorities are left, as is proper for healthy and responsible organisations, to serve their public independently, with vigour and with due attention to value for money.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,
That the General Grant Order, 1960, dated 25th November, 1960, a copy of which was laid before this House on 30th November, be approved.

Grants and Rates (Transitional Adjustments) Regulations, 1960, dated 25th November, 1960 [copy laid before the House, 30th November], approved.—[Mr. Brooke.]

LOCAL GOVERNMENT GENERAL GRANT (SCOTLAND)

6.34 p.m.

The Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. John Maclay): I beg to move,
That the General Grant (Scotland) Order, 1960, dated 29th November, 1960, a copy of which was laid before this House on 1st December, be approved.
I understand that it is the desire to debate simultaneously with this Order the Prayer in the name of the hon. Member for Hamilton (Mr. T. Fraser), that the Local Government (General Grant Transitional Adjustments) (Scotland) Regulations be annulled.

Mr. Thomas Fraser: I am not sure whether there is any point in taking these two simultaneously. There is so little in the Prayer.

Mr. Maclay: I understood that it was the desire to take the two together, but I am content to do what the hon. Gentleman and the House feel is right. We will deal with them separately, if that is what the hon. Gentleman would prefer.

Mr. Fraser: Yes.

Mr. Maclay: It is two years ago almost to the day that the House was asked to approve the Order fixing the amounts of general grant payable to local authorities in Scotland for the years 1959–60 and 1960–61.
I confess at the outset of my speech that I have been somewhat concerned about the best form in which to present this White Paper. I will listen carefully to any comments made during the debate on this aspect of our business. It may be argued, as it was two years ago, that we should set out much more detail than we have in the White Paper, but the difficulty is what detail to include and what to exclude, bearing in mind that all the items covered in the White Paper, or at any rate most of them, can be debated in one way or another during the Parliamentary year. There is also the added problem that if I set out too much I do not know what to say in my speech.

Mr. William Ross: The right hon. Gentleman never does.

Mr. Maclay: It is a problem, and I will listen to criticisms and comments on


the method of presentation. I have examined the form in which my right hon. Friend the Minister of Housing and Local Government set out his White Paper. It gives more detail, but I am not sure, if one studies it carefully, that it is very much more helpful than our method, and it is not a bad thing to have two methods and to see which works out the best.
The last Order was the beginning of the new system introduced by the Local Government and Miscellaneous Financial Provisions (Scotland) Act, 1958, under which specific grants for certain services, of which education is by far the most important, were replaced by a general grant whose total amount was fixed in relation to the estimated expenditure on those services but which local authorities were free to apply towards meeting any expenditure which would otherwise fall on the rates. The underlying purpose of this new system, as hon. Members know, is to give local authorities increased financial independence.
There were doubts expressed about this innovation, but I now feel that I can say with confidence that the first two years' experience has shown that the general grant is working, and working very well. I have the evidence of a leader in a Scottish newspaper a short time ago which made a very appreciative reference to this system, and I shall deal in a few moments with some of the developments that are now in hand in the services covered by the grant. It is against this background that I now ask the House to approve the General Grant (Scotland) Order, 1960, which fixes the amounts of grant payable to local authorities in Scotland for the two years 1961–62, and 1962–63.
In the first place, perhaps I should explain briefly how the amounts have been arrived at. The procedure to be followed, and the matters to be taken into consideration are laid down, as hon. Members know, in Section 2 of the 1958 Act, and have been set out in the Report which, as required by the Act, I have laid before the House along with the Order.
The first thing to be looked at is the latest information available about the rate of relevant expenditure, that is the expenditure on the services which have been covered by the general grant since

16th May, 1959. These are listed in the First Schedule to the Act. Estimates of the expenditure to be incurred in the two years 1961–63 were supplied by the individual local authorities except for one or two of the smaller services for which estimates were made by my Departments. These were small services like road safety, traffic patrols, physical training and recreation, and welfare services for the disabled, and the estimates were subsequently discussed with the local authorities.
The local authorities' estimates were adjusted by my Departments to take account, as required by the Act, of future variation in the level of prices, costs, and remuneration such as could be foreseen, of any probable fluctuation in the demand for the services, and of the need for developing the services having regard to the extent which the country can afford such development.
The adjusted estimates were communicated to the local authority associations with a view to the formal consultations with them required by Section 1 of the Act. These consultations took the form of informal discussions between local authority officials and officials of my Departments, followed by a meeting between my noble Friend the Minister of State and elected representatives of the local authorities.
I am informed that these discussions, while protracted in the case of the official negotiations, took place in a friendly and cordial atmosphere. A number of points were put forward, as a result of which further adjustments were made, and as a result the final estimates of relevant expenditure were agreed at the figures quoted in the White Paper. Hon. Members will have seen that the totals are £91·454 million for 1961–62, and £94·335 million for 1962–63. Since no change in the nature of the services covered by the grant is foreseen such as might justify a change in the proportion of grant to relevant expenditure, my noble Friend the Minister of State proposed, and the local authority associations agreed, that the grant should bear broadly the same proportion to estimated expenditure, taking the two-year period as a whole, as it had done in the previous grant period taken as a whole. On this basis the Minister of State suggested, on the Government's behalf, that the grants should be fixed


at the round sums of £57 million for 1961–62 and £59 million for 1962–63. The local authorities accepted these figures and they are incorporated in the Order which is now before the House. That is the history of the negotiations.
I should now like to deal with the developments which are foreseen in the relevant services and which are reflected in the increase of grant over the figures for the previous period. The estimates for education provide for the further development of the educational services, including new schools, maintenance of schools, additional teachers, the provision of a school health service and of aid to pupils by way of transport and bursaries, and the development of all forms of primary, secondary, technical and further education. Proposals for further development of the Youth Service have been reflected in a substantial increase in the provision under this head.
These developments were foreshadowed in two Government White Papers, "Education in Scotland—The Next Step" and "Technical Education". The first of these, which was published in December, 1958, dealt with primary and secondary education. With regard to buildings, it said that two tasks required to be put in hand at once: the modernisation or the replacement of out-of-date school buildings and the improvement of facilities in secondary schools to permit the development of the widest possible range of courses. For this purpose the Government would authorise capital expenditure totalling £65 million in the five years from 1960 to 1965.
As for the running of the schools, the Government intended to maintain and intensify their efforts to obtain more teachers by all practicable means. Since the equivalent debate two years ago the number of certificated teachers in Scottish schools has risen by 1,050, and we expect the number to rise by a further 1,300 in the next two years. As well as enabling the size of classes to be reduced and to cope with increased numbers of pupils, these teachers will be needed to cover new developments. These include the diversification of courses to ensure that all pupils are able to follow a course which really meets their needs, the introduction of new courses for pupils staying at school beyond the minimum age, in

order to take the new fourth-year certificate, and new opportunities for the most able pupils to develop their talents.
The White Paper on Technical Education, which was published in February, 1956, envisaged a continuing programme of development of facilities for further education in local technical colleges run by educational authorities. In particular, these new facilities would be needed to enable a very substantial development to take place in day release. This matter was debated in the Scottish Grand Committee last Thursday. As I said in opening, we debate these matters continuously throughout the year.
A year ago I set up the Scottish Consultative Council for the Yourth Service in Scotland, with the object of encouraging the development of youth clubs and other opportunities for young people to train themselves outside the formal machinery of education. Since then the Report of the Albemarle Committee on the Youth Service in England and Wales has been published, and has been closely studied in Scotland. As a result the education authorities expect to spend substantial sums in the next two years on the Youth Service, and provision for this has been included in the estimate upon which the general grant was assessed.
The fire service estimate includes provision for some additions to strength. In local health services the main development is on the mental health side. The Mental Health (Scotland) Act, passed last Session, will require a considerable expansion of existing local authority mental health services and the initiation of new services. By the direction of the Secretary of State the provision of mental health services has already been made a duty of local health authorities, and they will shortly be asked to submit their proposals for carrying out that duty.
These proposals may be expected to cover an increase in the number of occupation centres and work centres provided for the training of mentally defective adults and of children whose mental disability is so severe that they must be excluded from the school system; the provision of residential homes and hostels where this is necessary, perhaps for patients leaving hospital or for mentally disordered people who do not need hospital care but have no suitable home of their own; the employment of suitable


staff to provide supervision and aftercare by means of visits to patients at home, and other related services. The development of a really comprehensive community mental health service must take time, but it is hoped that there will be no delay in making a start, and provision is accordingly included in the grant.

Miss Margaret Herbison: What provision is the right hon. Gentleman expecting to be made for 1960–61? As far as I can make out from the general grant, taking all the local health services together the increase will be only about £20,000. What will that meet in all these fine things about which the right hon. Gentleman has been speaking?

Mr. Maclay: If the hon. Lady will permit me, with the permission of the House I hope to wind up the debate, and I will then pick up some of the details. As to the point she raised, it is quite clear that that growth cannot be a very fast one. There is a lot of work to be done. We have only reached the stage of asking for schemes to be submitted. In our discussions with local authorities as to what is possible and practicable—which was one object of the discussions—this figure was not disputed by them.

Mr. E. G. Willis: rose—

Mr. Maclay: I do not want to give way. I am sure that the hon. Member has a good point to make, but I have learnt that these speeches are not helped by their being interrupted too often. However—

Mr. Willis: I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way. I have been listening with great interest to what he has been saying. Can he give some indication of the sums which have been allowed in respect of the services he has referred to as being expanded? It would help us if he could give some such indication.

Mr. Maclay: That is a very difficult question. The hon. Member will realise that an immense amount of detail was gone into in our discussions with local authorities, and I do not have the precise sums available. During the course of

the debate I shall try to obtain some figures so that I can give detailed answers, but one of the problems is that we are covering an enormous range of subjects in one Order, and it is very difficult to pick out every precise figure which an hon. Member may want. I should have to have several large volumes and do a good deal of research into the detailed negotiations we had with local authorities in order to be in a position to answer every question.

Mr. Ross: Does not the right hon. Gentleman appreciate that, having filled the shop window with some of these good things, he might expect us to want to know exactly what will be available in the next few years, and what the cost will be?

Mr. Maclay: I can assure the hon. Member that all these things were discussed in great detail with the local authorities, and that they are satisfied that the figures I have mentioned are realistic, and cover what is really practicable in the years to come. He will appreciate that we have done as much as possible to make certain that what is possible will be done. I appreciate hon. Members opposite wanting to know details of various items. As I said, that is the real problem of the debate. I shall see what I can do later on.
Allowance has been made for the continued growth of other services, in particular the welfare service for handicapped persons. Intensive efforts towards greater road safety will also involve increased expenditure by local authorities, on such objects as road safety propaganda and training and co-operation in campaigns conducted by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents. When I go into these details hon. Members opposite will realise what a problem it is to give precise figures for every item which may come under discussion in a debate of this kind.
I understand that it is not desired to go on now with a discussion of the Regulations, and I will leave them for the time being. I believe hon. Members will agree that the evidence of the General Grant Order and the information given in the White Paper show that the general grant, far from being a restrictive kind of operation—as some hon. Members feared during the passage


of the Bill—is making possible the steady expansion of local government services. Relevant expenditure is rising, the grant is rising, and I do not think anyone can doubt that local authorities are taking an even more acute interest than before in making certain that the spending of the grant is done as economically as possible and to the best advantage of their communities and the ratepayers; and that there is real advantage in this method to give—

Mr. Speaker: Order. The right hon. Gentleman is in the same trouble as was the Minister of Housing and Local Government. I am afraid that a discussion on the vices and virtues in principle of the general grant against those of a particular grant is out of order.

Mr. Maclay: I apologise, Mr. Speaker. This was to be a short peroration. I commend this excellent Order to the House with the greatest enthusiasm.

Mr. Ross: Not a cheer!

6.52 p.m.

Mr. Thomas Fraser: If the right hon. Gentleman had been in the House during the debate on the English Order he would have heard that the first criticism made by almost every hon. Member who took part in the debate was that a hopelessly inadequate amount of time had been given to hon. Members to consider the Order. If that were a relevant criticism regarding England and Wales—and it was admitted to be by the Parliamentary Secretary who replied for the Government—I would remind the right hon. Gentleman that the English Order was ordered to be printed on 30th November, which was Wednesday of last week, together with the Report. The Scottish General Grant Order was ordered to be printed one day later, on 1st December, which was Thursday of last week.
The right hon. Gentleman is well aware that Scottish Members of Parliament therefore went North last weekend without the General Grant Order at all. They came back to Westminster on Monday when they could get a copy together with the Report made by the Secretary of State. We are in the position of having our local authorities and their associations at least 400 miles away. The right hon. Gentleman must know

that it was completely impossible for any hon. Member representing a Scottish constituency to have any discussions at all, either with individual local authorities or with a local authority association, regarding the Order. Hon. Members representing English constituencies made the same complaint although the relevant associations are here in London. How much more serious is our complaint that we have had this hopelessly inadequate amount of time to discuss the Order!
In the earlier debate, hon. Members were concerned about the inadequate information in the Report presented by the Minister. Someone must have informed the Secretary of State of this criticism because he started his speech by admitting that there was not very much information in our Report. Then the right hon. Gentleman invited us to make suggestions during the debate about what he might put in the Report. This Report is presented by the right hon. Gentleman under the provisions of Section 1 (5) of the Local Government and Miscellaneous Financial Provisions (Scotland) Act, 1958. Subsection (5)—I will quote only the relevant words—states:
An Order … shall be laid before the Commons House of Parliament together with a report by the Secretary of State explaining the considerations leading to the provisions of the order.…
Those were the words written into the Statute by the right hon. Gentleman. Now he wishes us to tell him what he meant when he wrote those words in 1958, which seems an extraordinary position. The right hon. Gentleman has certainly failed in his duty to Parliament to give a report explaining the considerations leading to the provisions of the Order. There is no attempt whatsoever to do that regarding the Order which has been presented to us.
When I was looking at these Orders and discussing them with an hon. Friend, he suggested to me that the Secretary of State must have thought we were still working to the Goschen formula so that his Report would be eleven-eightieths of the length of the English Report. But I called the attention of my hon. Friend to the fact that if we took out the whole of page 2 of the Report by the Secretary of State in which it merely stated that there is power to make a report, we find that the right hon. Gentleman's explanation is contained in half a page on


page 3. That is far short of the eleven-eightieths of the explanation given by the Minister of Housing and Local Government.
I think that the right hon. Gentleman is guilty of treating the House with contempt in asking us to approve that legislative provision, as he did in 1958, and then—having presented two Reports before now, and having been told on both the previous occasions that his Reports were totally inadequate and that we wanted some explanation of the considerations leading to the provisions of the Order—in asking what it is we really want. That is a bit thick. I hope that he will tell us what he meant when he forced those provisions through the House in 1958.
Oddly enough, in his speech the right hon. Gentleman gave some details of the developing services he anticipated in Scotland in the next two years, but when he was asked the cost of these developing services he said he would rather answer such questions at the end of the debate. These are questions which should be answered in the Report and not in the debate at all. They form the basis of the whole discussion.

Mr. Maclay: The hon. Member will realise that in nearly every case these matters are debated in great detail when, for example, we have an education debate, and on such occasions as that. It is not only on the Estimates; they are debated in many other ways throughout the year.

Mr. Fraser: Does not the right hon. Gentleman realise that we are then discussing them after the event, after Parliament has decided the amount of money to be devoted? Does not he realise that this General Grant Order, together with this tiny Report—which tells us nothing at all—takes the place of all the many pages of detailed Estimates we used to have published over the year in the Civil Estimates? Does not he realise that we were able to look at the education service and get an estimate of the cost of the different branches and aspects of education when those Estimates were published?
We expect the Secretary of State in presenting the Report, together with the General Grant Order, to give us similar information. Then we should know what the services were costing and how the

different parts of the services were moving upwards and downwards, and at least be able to make some appreciation of the changes taking place in the services that give rise to the increase or, if hon. Members wish the decrease in expenditure on the services. But we have no such information, and I am astounded to find that it never occurred to the Secretary of State, until rather more than two years after the passing of the Act, that he might ask someone what he meant when he put in those words.
We do not know what the estimates were in the first place and to what extent they had to be modified twice after these "amicable discussions", as he described them, with the Scottish authorities. Nor do we know to what extent the local authority estimates were influenced by the knowledge that individual local authorities' expenditure would not of itself influence the amount of general grant. I hope that is not too complicated. It is well appreciated among local authorities now that they are to get the general grant under the formula irrespective of the cost of the services provided by the local authorities. Now in estimating expenditure for the next two years, a local authority has to bear in mind what the size of the general grant is likely to be and to take account of the burden which would be put on the rates if it endeavoured to carry through those services which it believes desirable in the interests of the ratepayers of that community.
The general grant has increased every year to keep pace, I agree, with the cost of the services actually provided. What we do not know is whether the services are expanding as they ought to expand. Are they expanding even as the local authorities which provide them would like to see them expand or would have expanded them had they been permitted to do so if we never had this system at all? What we do know is that costs are rising all the time. The fact that more money is being allocated one year than in preceding years does not mean that there is any expansion of the services at all.
Education accounts for at least 90 per cent. of the money in the general grant. Can any of us be satisfied that we are having the increase in expenditure on education provided so that the expanding service will meet the increasing school


population demand? There are more school children every year. The Secretary of State reminded us in the debate in the Scottish Grand Committee a week ago, the debate to which he referred this afternoon:
In 1959 80,000 boys and girls in Scotland reached the age of 15. In 1961 the number will rise to 91,000, and in 1962, the peak year, to 100,000."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Scottish Grand Committee, 1st December, 1960; c. 5.]
There is an increase of 25 per cent. in the number of young people reaching 15 years of age in a period of three years. All those young people have to pass through our secondary schools. There is a great need for development of secondary education. Secondary education is more expensive than primary education. We have this great increase in the number of young people attending our secondary schools. Is it even matched by the increase in educational expenditure estimated in this General Grant Order, let alone providing for the expansion of the service about which the right hon. Gentleman talked in the debate last Thursday and on other occasions? These are the things to which we would very much like to have an answer.
In view of the impossibility of hon. Members from Scottish constituencies consulting their own local authorities—let alone local authority associations—in order to get the whole picture, I have to consider this matter against the background of information which is already available to me, pertaining particularly to the County of Lanark. I find that in Lanarkshire the increase in 1960 over 1946 in the number of secondary school pupils is no less than 77 per cent. I admit that there has been an increase in Lanarkshire of 10,600 secondary places since 1946. The Secretary of State will say that this is a wonderful achievement. That is fine until we find that we have 12,500 more secondary school pupils. So we are substantially worse off now than we were in 1946.
The service is costing more and, in fact, on these figures it is declining. Lanark education authority has been involved in capital expenditure on schools since 1946 which takes account of 13 per cent. of the Scottish total. We have slightly more than 10 per cent. of Scotland's population. It represents

more than 10 per cent. of the money in general grant. Since 1946 Lanarkshire is seen not to have been a laggard education authority for it has accounted for 13 per cent. of all capital expenditure on building new schools and the education rate is very high. I do not know whether I need go into that at this time, but it is in fact 23s. 6d. in the £, less assistance from general grant. If we take that at 60 per cent., it still amounts to 9s. 5d. in the £.
Lanarkshire education authority believes that if the Secretary of State were to adhere to his present general grant arrangements contained in this Order and if the authority none the less were to go through with the school building programme it has in mind and has submitted to the Secretary of State for approval, the education rate in Lanarkshire would increase by no less than 3s. in the £. The right hon. Gentleman knows this—at least there have been discussions between Lanarkshire education authority and the Scottish Education Department, so the Secretary of State in his corporate capacity knows it.
The Government and the Secretary of State have decided to permit capital investment of £65 million on school buildings in the period 1960–65. Education authorities in Scotland have told the right hon. Gentleman that their needs to comply with standards which he himself has laid down and circulated to local education authorities are no less than £100 million in that same period. Lanarkshire has submitted proposals which suggest that it would require to spend £16 million on new schools in this five-year period in order to comply with the standards laid down by him. It is not surprising that the Scottish Education Department wondered whether Lanarkshire County Council had overestimated its requirement. A meeting took place and, at that meeting, the Education Department officials had to agree with Lanarkshire education authority that the whole of its programme of £16 million was, in fact, required if it were to comply with the standards laid down by the Secretary of State.
Lanarkshire's share of the £65 million would be round about £7 million. It is within the limit of the £65 million over the next five years that the present block


grant has been worked out. The Secretary of State cannot deny that. If Lanarkshire education authority felt able to go ahead with its capital investment programme and got approval from the Secretary of State for the £16 million worth in five years, even though the Secretary of State says that he can allow only £65 million worth for the whole of Scotland, the education rate in Lanarkshire would be increased by no less than 3s. in the £.
This is not making a partnership between the Government and the local education authorities in the provision of important services in education. I honestly believe that the programme that is being attempted by the Lanarkshire education authority is not an overambitious one and is not going to provide a lot of the educational establishments which some of us have been led to believe are on the way. This does not include a new technical school for Motherwell and Wishaw, or the technical school for Hamilton, about which we have had a public statement by the Secretary of State. These are not in this programme that has been given to us by the Lanarkshire education authority, so that the Secretary of State will see that hon. Members for Lanarkshire constituencies—and I think this is also true of hon. Members for other parts of Scotland—cannot be satisfied with this general grant because it happens to provide more money than would have been available under the earlier grant.
May I turn to one other local service, included in these services, on which very little information is available? I refer to the fire service in Lanarkshire. I have had correspondence with the Secretary of State about the manpower position in the fire service in Lanarkshire. We understand that he issued a circular about three years ago laying down certain manpower requirements. I also understand that the Lanarkshire Fire Brigades Joint Committee has never been able to comply with the manpower requirements laid down by the Secretary of State. We have discussed this matter with the Fire Brigades Joint Committee, which told us that one of the reasons why it cannot comply with these manpower requirements is that the Secretary of State still refuses to make the necessary adjustments in the general grant

to take account of the increased cost upon the local authority. Is that true or not true? That is what I want to know. The local authority and the Joint Committee tell me that that is the position.
This is the occasion—when we are discussing the general grant—when I have a duty to put these questions to the Secretary of State. Am I being correctly informed? Is this why the manpower requirements of the circular have not been complied with? Is this why he is not enforcing the circular as he is entitled to do? The right hon. Gentleman has the power to enforce those manpower standards.

Mr. William Hamilton: Answer now.

Mr. Fraser: I will give way to the right hon. Gentleman at once if he wants to answer now. I do not want to keep the House any longer, but here is the position. We have had a hopelessly inadequate period of time in which to discuss this Order. We have had no opportunity of getting in touch either with the individual local authorities or the local authority associations since the Order became available. The Secretary of State has given us no information in the Report that he published together with the Order. He asked us to tell him what he should put in the Report, and I have told him what he put into the Act of 1948 about the purposes for which the Report was to be published.
I have shown the right hon. Gentleman that local authorities in preparing their estimates do not prepare them by reference to what they believe the people in their areas require in the way of expanded services, but have regard to what they believe to be the amount of money that will be available from Government sources and the effect upon their rates of any further expansion of the services beyond that initially suggested by the Secretary of State, like the £65 million for schools in the next five years. I doubt very much whether any increase in the grant in respect of a component of the total grant is seen to be for educational expenditure. I doubt very much whether this even takes care of the two things to which I have referred—the increased school population and the higher proportion of that population which is at the secondary stage, which is the more


expensive stage. I doubt very much whether the increase in the grant takes account of these two factors, let alone provides for increased expansion in the education services, which, if we do not achieve it in the next few years, will leave us very much a second-class nation in Europe.
This seems to me to be a dreadful thing, because we in Scotland used to think that we were in the forefront in the provision of education for our young people. It seems now that we are already lagging behind, and within the limits of this General Grant Order there is very little prospect that we shall do anything to catch up in the next few years.

7.17 p.m.

Mr. E. G. Willis: I should like, first, to support what my hon. Friend the Member for Hamilton (Mr. T. Fraser) has said about the total inadequacy of this Explanatory Memorandum. I do not wish to elaborate on this, because my hon. Friend has said a good deal about it, but there is no doubt at all in my opinion that the Secretary of State is in dereliction of his duty under Section 1 (5) of the 1950 Act by offering us very little explanation for the changes made in this Order.
I want to reinforce what my hon. Friend has said about education, because I know that in Midlothian, too, the position is almost exactly the same as in Lanarkshire. Here, we know, is a very progressive local authority anxious to provide a scheme—I would not call it ambitious—to meet the requirements of the ratepayers of Midlothian on education, but which has found itself up against the difficulty that if it does so it will increase the rates very much indeed. In other words, other people will benefit as a result of what it does. This is not the time to argue this matter. We argued it on another occasion at very great length, and I hope that the Secretary of State is beginning to appreciate the point.
I want to ask the right hon. Gentleman whether, in fact, when he considered the making of this General Grant Order he took into consideration the effect it might have on the development of our educational system. In the debate we had last Thursday, a shocking state of affairs was revealed in respect of the

Government's programme for technical and further education. I wonder whether the right hon. Gentleman, when making this Order, took this into account, and also took into account the fact that if the local authorities proceed as quickly as they should in fulfilling their obligations in this connection they will be very considerably penalised. If so, what provision is made in this General Grant Order to overcome that? What provision is made to enable them to keep up to date with their educational programme?
This is exceedingly important, but the right hon. Gentleman gives us no facts or figures. He says that they are very difficult to work out. How does he expect us to be able to discuss it intelligently if we cannot be given these figures, if they are so difficult to ascertain that he cannot provide them? What way is this to treat hon. Members? It makes our job exceedingly difficult. We do our best by running around and trying to get such information as we can, but it is not very much.
There are one or two points, which my hon. Friend the Member for Hamilton did not mention, which I want to raise. The first concerns the enormous development which the right hon. Gentleman promised us in the health service, in particular as a result of the Mental Health Act. Under the general grant proposals, the estimated increase in expenditure on the health service between 1960–61 and 1962–63 is £110,000. The right hon. Gentleman has appreciated what he is doing here. The estimated increase for England and Wales for the same period is from £66 million to £77 million, or £11 million.

Mr. Gordon Walker: And much too little at that.

Mr. Willis: The right hon. Gentleman has told us that his grand plans for the National Health Service in Scotland will cost £110,000. Why is the increase for England a hundred times as much? Surely he does not think that we can possibly be satisfied with one-hundredth of the increases being granted in England and Wales on the Health Service. It is a positive disgrace.
What is the right hon. Gentleman's estimate, for instance, for the hospital building programme and the development of mental health services? I read


in the Scotsman today that the medical officer for Fife has drawn up a scheme for Fife alone which will cost £250,000. If we multiply that by the number of local authorities in Scotland we get some idea of what the implementation of the Mental Health Act will mean to the local authorities in Scotland. How much has the right hon. Gentleman allowed in the General Grant Order for the development of those services? We had great promises during the Committee stage of that Bill of what would be done, but as far as I can see not much has been done.
The right hon. Gentleman said that he would give us any figures for which we asked. We could give him a long list of the figures which we should like and a long list of the things which we should like to know. I should like to know how much of the general grant is due simply to increases in wages and costs. Unless we know that, we cannot estimate what expansion is going on. In my view the increase in wages and other costs is considerable. I read in the newspaper today that a recent wage award would increase the rates in Edinburgh by 2d. in the £, or a total of £66,000. What does that mean for the whole of Scotland? I suppose it means roughly ten times as much—£660,000. But we know nothing about this. There was an increase about a year ago.
How can we judge the development of these services and what the right hon. Gentleman has in mind if we do not know how much of the grant is attributable wholly to increasing costs and increasing wages, which represent no expansion in the services at all? The Bill lays it down that the right hon. Gentleman must take these things into consideration. Consequently, he should have a figure in mind as to what he allows for them, otherwise I do not see how he can take them into consideration.
In July I asked the right hon. Gentleman a Question in the House about the effect which the increasing cost of land was having upon local authorities We have passed legislation which makes it necessary for local authorities to pay the market price for land. At the same time, in some cities in Scotland, a certain amount of land speculation is going on, with the result, in my view, that there will be an increase in the sums which local authorities have to pay for land.

How much has been allowed for that? I do not know.
When I asked my Question in July the right hon. Gentleman said that there was no evidence of any worthwhile increase in land values or that it was costing local authorities more to buy land, but on 23rd September, in a report of an appeal before the Edinburgh Planning Committee, I read that there has been an overall increase in land values in Scotland over the last two or three years of about 50 per cent. and that in Edinburgh there has been an increase of 300 per cent. I assume that the same increases are taking place in Glasgow and elsewhere, although I do not know. In the evidence before the Planning Committee on behalf of the appellant it was pointed out that the present high prices were particularly applicable to small areas of land and that if a local authority had to acquire a small centre or to clear a small centre, it must expect to pay these high prices. To what extent has that been taken into consideration? Has it been taken into consideration? What is the Government's intention? Does it affect the amount which the Government are paying?
I do not want to continue much longer on this subject, because some of my hon. Friends wish to raise other important matters. The right hon. Gentleman said that there was evidence that there was great satisfaction with this general grant scheme. He may take it from me that he has not inquired very closely from some of the more prominent local government officials if that is his view, because they are certainly not satisfied. It would be out of order for me to range wider than this scheme, but although the Government have increased the grant this time, the problem facing local authorities of the heavily increasing burden falling upon them is not being met. To the extent to which it is being met by the General Grant Order, it is being met in a fashion which penalises the most progressive, enthusiastic and vigorous local authorities.

7.28 p.m.

Mr. Thomas Steele: I should like to follow up what my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, East (Mr. Willis) said about the information which it is necessary for us to have in order to understand this Order.


If we were given figures to show the percentage contribution to the costs being made by local authorities compared with the percentage contribution from Government sources, we should have some idea of what has happened over the past few years and what is likely to happen in the future.
Like my hon. Friend the Member for Hamilton (Mr. T. Fraser), I believe that the evidence is quite clear that the local authorities are not looking at the need and providing for it but at the amount of money which they are likely to receive and then making provision for the need as far as they can. This came out clearly from the right hon. Gentleman's speech. He indicated the main factors which went towards local government costs, such as education and the health service, and then turned to other matters and said that these were determined more by the Secretary of State.
During his speech the right hon. Gentleman gave the impression that everything in the garden was lovely. We gathered that improvements were taking place and that we could look forward to an increase in facilities for education, health services, and so on. I began to wonder whether, if all that was true, we could offer any criticism of the right hon. Gentleman. He was suddenly interrupted by my hon. Friend the Member for Lanarkshire, North (Miss Herbison), who brought him very rapidly down to earth. When cross-examined about what figures he could give us to indicate where the improvement would come from, we received the old answer that this was very difficult.

Mr. T. Fraser: He was torpedoed.

Mr. Steele: "Torpedoed" is perhaps a modern phrase to describe what is happening at present. We are always told that the matter is very difficult. If that is true, how did the Scottish Office arrive at the figures which have been provided? There must be some basis for arriving at the figures.
I discovered from looking at the long padding—I will not describe it as "explanation"—on page 3 that one of the reasons why an increase has taken place is that the Post Office is to be put on a fully commercial basis. It is odd that the Scottish grant has to be increased

because another Government Department has been losing money. Paragraph 6 contains these words:
so that in the next grant period charges will be made for the use of the mail in the registration of electors.
Local authorities will now be saddled with the burden of paying for the correspondence. If this burden is placed on them, we know that they will not be fully reimbursed by the Government, because that is not the method which the Government adopt. It would be interesting to know how much the extra postage will cost.
The Secretary of State said that there were certain services where the basis of the grant was not fixed on estimates received from local authorities but that he decided what they should be. He went on to say that the amount for physical training was decided by him in reference to the need to develop the service in accordance with the country's ability to pay. It is apparent from the Appendix that no alteration has been made in the figure for physical training and recreation. For 1961–62 and 1962–63 it is to be the same as it was in 1959–60, namely, £0·01 million.

Mr. Cyril Bence: That is £10,000—wicked.

Mr. Steele: One imagines that nothing much has been happening. Why have the Government suddenly had to introduce increase of pay for the police force? Why have we seen an operation by the Government which trade unions would like to see applied in all the negotiations in which they take part? It has happened very quickly simply because there has been a need for it and because something has to be done quickly to look after the citizens.
Various reports—notably the Albemarle Report, to which the right hon. Gentleman referred, and the excellent Report of the Wolfenden Committee—have indicated that something must be done if we are to provide proper facilities for physical recreation for the young.
Remembering all that, what provision has been made? There is no addition to the estimate right up to 1962–63. Hon. Members will agree that this is an important matter. With the natural assets of our countryside we should be


able to provide our youth with the opportunity of having proper physical recreation. We should be able to give them the important healthy recreation they need, particularly in the summer.
The Wolfenden Committee made some excellent suggestions about what local authorities might do. If they were followed, it would not be terribly expensive. One suggestion was that landlords and others should be encouraged to make facilities available for camping sites.

Mr. Speaker: Order. I think that the hon. Member goes just outside the rules of order. I understand that an inquiry directed as to how the figures have been arrived at is appropriate, but I think that a detailed discussion of spending ventures which might be undertaken would be outside the scope of the order.

Mr. Steele: Thank you very much. Sir. I was perhaps carried away with my enthusiasm—

Mr. Bence: Indignation.

Mr. Steele: —and indignation at the fact that nothing was being done. I have pointed out that there is no alteration in the Estimates. In 1962–63 it will still be £0·01 million. I should like an explanation of why it will be the same.
I think that it will be in order to ask the right hon. Gentleman this question. As changes in the value of money have taken place and as salaries and other costs are rising, will there be a decrease, instead of an increase, in the service over the next four years?
There are many other questions which I should like to ask, but I will now content myself with hoping that the right hon. Gentleman can give me an explanation of why the figure has not altered. Does it mean that the Albemarle and Wolfenden Reports are being completely ignored in the calculations of the future provisions for the health and recreation of young people? If they are being completely ignored and if nothing is to be done about this, it is shameful. It is an indication that local authorities are being cribbed and cramped in their efforts to do something. It indicates that they cannot possibly do the things that they want to do, because they have to decide what they will spend on the basis of what they think they will receive from the Government.

They cannot make their decision in accordance with the neds of the community, whose interests, health and welfare are their prime concern.

7.38 p.m.

Mr. William Hamilton: By way of preface to my speech I want to protest at the manner in which the Secretary of State introduced the Order. He continually gives evidence of not having done his homework. He comes to the House and reads his brief very carefully, very often quoting the exact words of the Order which we already have in our possession. We can all read it. There is no need for him to come to the House and read it almost verbatim, plus a few remarks that his civil servants have provided him with. He must not think that he can get away with such conduct.
I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will have learned something from the speeches made from this side, particularly the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Hamilton (Mr. T. Fraser). When the right hon. Gentleman comes here next year and in succeeding years, I hope that he will take a leaf out of the book of my hon. Friends and give us much more information, both in his speech and in the Order, than he gave us tonight.
The main reason for introducing this general grant was to set the local authorities free. Whatever the justification of that might be, it has certainly not set Members of Parliament free, because we are very much restricted both as to time and as to the manner of the presentation of the Order. We should have at least a full day to debate this Scottish Order, and a separate and additional day for the English Order.
We are now debating very important services, many of which we get no other opportunity than this to debate. The right hon. Gentleman ought to take account of that, and should also take account of the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Hamilton, and some of those who spoke in the debate on the English Order, who said that we ought to have at least a fortnight between presentation and debate to give us time to consult our local authorities.
Quite fortuitously, I was in the company of certain Fife officials yesterday in another capacity—which is linked with this. I will say more of that in a


moment or two. The county treasurer said, "Of course, the general grant is all right, except that we should like the percentage grant reinstituted for education".
I accept that, of course. The basis of our argument has all along been that a service that is of national importance is increasingly being placed as a burden on the local authorities. In effect, the Secretary of State says, "If you want to increase this service you must do it out of the rates. We have decided what we shall give you, and anything beyond that must come from the rates".
My hon. Friend the Member for Dunbartonshire, West (Mr. Steele) spoke of the recent police pay increases. Those increases do not themselves come within the general grant, but when they are granted—and I say at once that we agree with them—we were told by the Home Secretary the other day that they will cost the local authorities another £10 million. I do not know whether that figure included the Scottish local authorities, or whether the right hon. Gentleman would care to give us a separate figure—

Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Major Sir William Anstruther-Gray): I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Gentleman, particularly as I have only just taken the Chair, but the police do not come under the Order that we are now debating.

Mr. Hamilton: I am well aware of that, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, and I said so, but there are consequential results to which I want to refer.
The increase in police pay will almost automatically mean that the teachers will demand an increase, and teachers' pay comes within the general grant. Teachers in Scotland and in England have pointed out that the teacher coming into the profession after two years of training, and after having had a grammar school education will, on entry, get less than a raw recruit to the police force. The teachers will certainly ask for a very substantial increase in pay, and will seek to bring pressure to bear on us—I hope that they will—and on the Government for retrospection in the same way as the police are to get retrospection.
If the Government accept education as a priority as high as the police they must

give the teachers terms not less generous than those now being given to the police. We know that juvenile delinquency is increasing and must be tackled at the roots. The roots lie in the schools and in educational provision—the youth services have been mentioned. We can only tackle it by improving the lot of the teachers, because if we improve the lot of the police without improving the lot of the teachers we shall find that much of the good work that ought to be done by the teachers cannot be remedied by improvement in the police strength.
I have already made one or two criticisms of the educational service, and I should now like to ask a few questions that relate to the figures in the Order. If the teachers get the increase that they are bound to get now that the other increase has been given, will the right hon. Gentleman make an addition, as he is entitled to under the Act, to the block-grant proposals? If he is not prepared to do that, it is quite clear that local authority rates will have to be increased very substantially.
Looking at these figures, one finds some very important items that are not changed at all, or are increased only very slightly. My hon. Friend the Member for Lanarkshire, North (Miss Herbison) referred to the figure for welfare services for the handicapped, and pointed out that the increase for 1961–62 is £20,000. The right hon. Gentleman talks about increased provision for occupational centres, increased provision for training centres, increased provision of personnel—how many of those things can we get for £20,000? A scheme has been drawn up for Fife which will cost at least ten or twelve times that amount. That is just for one county.
Lt is no good the right hon. Gentleman expressing all these noble sentiments, and then saying, in effect, "This is all very well, this work is wonderful, but if you provide these services you can jolly well pay for them—the Government won't". The sentiment is no use unless the wherewithal is also provided, provided by the Government, and to a greater degree than is shown here.
Provision for child care goes up by £20,000. Child care is an extremely important part of our social welfare services. No doubt, when he replies, the right hon. Gentleman will express similar


noble sentiments about the need for it, but those sentiments are not matched by deeds—by £ s. d. from the Government.
I am interested in other services for children, and particularly in provision for physically-handicapped or mentally-handicapped children. Let us look at what is provided for school-crossing patrols. We hear a great deal about road safety and road accidents, but we find no increase in the provision for school-crossing patrols. Was that because the local authorities intimated that they were not interested in any increase in this service? For road safety it is the same thing. There is no increase whatever. There is little enough provision within the terms of the Order, but there is no increase on that all too inadequate provision.
Was that because the local authorities had intimated that they were not interested in increasing the provision? Did they say to the right hon. Gentleman that they were not interested in improving the school-crossing patrol service or road safety precautions, or did they say that they were and was the Government's reply that if they wanted to do anything they would have to bear it entirely on the rates? Is this a local responsibility or a national responsibility? We should be told something about these things within the documents before the debate starts. The debate would be curtailed somewhat if we had that information.
There is no separate provision, as I understand it, for the mental health service. This is an extremely important service. I have said many times in the House that the real test of a civilised society is how it treats minorities, particularly minorities which are not vocal, which have no political pressure group to speak for them in Parliament. The mentally handicapped come within that definition.
Nearly two years ago, before the General Election, I drew to the attention of the Department the case of a boy of 15 or 16 in Thornton in my constituency who is—I say this with all due regard to everyone concerned—someone who ought to be in a home in his own interest and in the interests of his parents. He is still at his own home. His parents have told me that he is sexually irresponsible. In his home he has

a sister in her teens and the parents are frightened. That boy cannot be got out of that home because there is no provision for him in Fife. It is not the Fife County Council which is to blame. It is simply because there is overall quite inadequate provision for such people.
The Government cannot contract out of their responsibility for the inadequacy. I ask the right hon. Gentleman not only to express fine sentiments but to say that we shall have an explosive revolution in this work in Scotland and our sentiments will be matched with the cash. That is what counts.
The right hon. Gentleman spoke about increasing the freedom of local authorities. A case was brought to his notice yesterday. I wish to put it on record now, and I hope that what I say will not prejudice the Secretary of State's examination of the matter. The Fife County Council wishes to build a school. It wants to employ a certain contractor. The Secretary of State said that it must not employ that contractor but someone else should be employed. The difference between the contract prices is £142 in a contract for £52,000. When the Secretary of State says, "You will not use your contractor; you will use mine", is that the result of this Order? Is that what the right hon. Gentleman means when he talks about the freedom of local authorities to decide their own expenditure?
Representatives of the local authority came down to see the Secretary of State yesterday and informed him of facts of which he was not aware. As a result, he has very kindly said that he will reconsider the position. As I said before, I hope that what I have said now will not prejudice that examination. I put the matter in this context: if the Secretary of State wants to set the local authorities free, this is a test case. If they are not allowed freedom in such a matter as that, where are they now more free as a result of this system than they were before?
I think we have said enough in this debate already to convince the Secretary of State that we are not satisfied with this procedure. At the last election we were returned with a majority in Scotland on, among other things, the promise that we would reintroduce the percentage grant. The right hon. Gentleman had


better understand that if we are to have the advances in education and the welfare services of which I have spoken and on which I feel very strongly, the Government cannot, whatever fine sentiments they express, contract out of their obligations by withholding the £ s. d. to enable the local authorities to get on with their work.

7.56 p.m.

Mr. Cyril Bence: I was amazed when I first looked at the Order and the White Paper. I thought my arithmetic had gone haywire. Starting at the bottom of the column in the Appendix to the White Paper, Local Government Finance (Scotland), we see the entry for physical training and recreation. The revised estimate for 1959–60 is £10,000. In 1962–63 it is still £10,000. That is all the Treasury is prepared to give to Scotland for physical training and recreation.
Under their new scales, that is the price of ten policemen. It is the price of one and a half judges or of two Secretaries of State for Scotland. It is shocking. The Lord Advocate's fees were nearly double that when he was at the Bar. I am sure that my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Newport (Sir F. Soskice), without embarrassment to himself, would agree. Ten thousand pounds is all we are to have for physical training and recreation—

Mr. Willis: For all the youth of Scotland.

Mr. Bence: —for everybody. After the Licensing Bill has gone through, the brewers will spend more than that on building new pubs.
I turn next to police traffic patrols, £40,000 a year. I know that the police are not covered by the Order, but these are police traffic patrols and I assume that policemen will be doing the work. I say at once that I approve of their new salary scales. I shall be delighted when the miners, the engineers and the shipbuilders have scales of earnings reaching the same level. I hope that this will be an encouragement to the people who produce the nation's wealth to have their scales raised. All the State is prepared to pay for police traffic patrols in Scotland is £40,000 a year.

Who is to pay all the increased costs of the police traffic patrols? Is it to be the local authorities? Will it go on the rates again?
I come now to the fire services. For protecting human life on the roads by police traffic patrols we are to have £40,000 a year. For the fire services, we are to have £500,000 extra. I have always been rather impressed by the readiness of the State to provide a great deal of money to protect real property from destruction by fire. I know very well what it costs insurance companies when a building is burnt down. The State is prepared to pay another £500,000 for fire protection, and no doubt the insurance companies are delighted. More premiums will be collected as profit instead of being paid as compensation for burnt out buildings. I am, however, the first to recognise that fires are also dangerous to human life.
For local health services there is to be an increase in 1961–62 of £20,000 and in 1962–63 an increase of £90,000—a total increase over two years of £110,000 for the whole of Scotland for the health functions performed under the local medical officer of health. The geriatric services in Scotland are hopelessly inadequate. Dumbarton is hopelessly short of geriatric services. I do not know what the Dunbartonshire County Council's share of the £20,000 will be, but it will be inadequate to bring the geriatric services up to the necessary standard in an affluent society.
For road safety in 1959–60 there is to be an increase of £20,000. For 1962–63 all that we are to get is another £10,000 a year, again the price of ten policemen. Apparently, road safety in Scotland is worth an increase of no more than the price of ten "coppers". This is shocking and ridiculous on today's monetary values. I should imagine that these estimates were drafted 50 years ago, when the value of the £ was different from what it is today. On current values they are absolutely hopeless.
As I said, the total sum for physical training and recreation is £10,000. It is doubtful whether a recreational centre in a small burgh could be built for less than £5,000 or £6,000. In a largely populated area, it would probably cost much more. These estimates should be


taken back and there should be a re-examination of all the priorities in Scotland.
The estimate for child care is also inadequate. For 1961–62 expenditure is to go up by £60,000.

Mr. Willis: No—£20,000.

Mr. Bence: It is to go up from 1·89 to 1·95 million. That is an increase of £60,000. Perhaps the printers have made a mistake and it should be tens of millions.
These grants towards very important services for what has to be done in a modern society are absolutely ridiculous. We give more in the form of annual subsidies to all sorts of people for all sorts of purposes. This is chicken feed When one takes the annual budget of our society—

Mr. Willis: What about Lord Lovat?

Mr. Bence: Lord Lovat got £100,000 for the loss of his salmon. I do not know how many salmon he lost, but that was the compensation he received. I cannot understand how intelligent people can bring to the House of Commons a document containing such stupid irrelevant figures when one considers the real situation in Scotland.
A comparison has been made between the educational services of England and Wales and those of Scotland. Greatly increased grants have been made in England and Wales compared with the footling increases in Scotland. I missed the first part of the Secretary of State's speech, but I should imagine that he did not have much to do with compiling these figures. I believe that he feels that we should considerably increase the amount of money we are spending as a society on facilities for recreation and leisure for our adolescents. The fact that we have not adequately provided these things for the mass of our people in urban districts is one of the reasons why we have to encourage more people to join the police force. I am convinced that society as a whole has not made a big enough effort in urban areas to encourage adolescent children to play their part in organisations and institutions so that in their leisure they may not be thrown back on their own rather immature resources. This is what leads to the delinquency about which we complain so much.

Mr. Willis: The figures for physical training and recreation do not include anything for increased wages, let alone expansion.

Mr. Bence: I thank my hon. Friend, because I had not realised that. This is a great part of a child's education. It is well known that in our structure of recreation and further education youth leaders are probably the worst paid. That is why we cannot get good youth leaders. It is a most difficult task. Recreation and physical training must be made attractive. It must be fun to young people. This cannot be so if all the State provides is £10,000 a year. It means that every local authority in every county is scrimping and saving to try to get young people interested, happy and keen to play their part. It is dangerous to tell young people that this is for their good, but we and the parents know that it is so. We shall never get it by stinginess and scrimping and scraping.
I know that there are many splendid ideas concerning physical training and recreation for adolescents, but the Dunbartonshire County Council will have great difficulty in finding money to further the enterprise of those concerned with physical training. I know that I cannot talk about that, but I do not think that it is necessary to do so because, whatever work a person does in any part of Scotland, he knows very well that we are inhibited from doing the things that we want to do because there is not enough money.
We have just had a Bank Rate cut to help America. I read about it on the placards. Let us have a bit of a Bank Rate cut to help Scotland. Charity begins at home. Instead, we get these fiddling items like £10,000 a year for physical training and £30,000 for road safety. This is the most amazing day in my life. Scotland's 5 million souls, who form a great part of the United Kingdom, have made a tremendous contribution, but the Secretary of State comes with a fiddling thing like this and the Chancellor of the Exchequer goes to the Bank of England and says, "We will cut the Bank Rate. The Yanks are broke." These proposals are all that Scotland is to get. I ask the Secretary of State immediately to withdraw them in view of current events, because this is an insult to Scotland.

8.11 p.m.

Mr. J. Grimond: I apologise to the Secretary of State for having missed his speech. It has had a pretty bad Press on this side of the House. Nevertheless, I am sorry that I was not present to hear it all. I share the surprise of many other people that the amount which we expect to spend is physical training and recreation is not expected to increase. Possibly, that is because it is thought to be too much already. Whatever the reason, it seems odd that it will remain at the same figure over the next five years. We have read that Scottish girls are now as strong as American boys. Nevertheless, it seems complacent not to allow any extension in this service.
The point I want to make strongly is that some local authorities, among them some of the smaller ones, and certainly one of those which I represent, find their finances a matter of increasing difficulty. To throw more and more burden on to the rating system is wholly wrong. It is an illogical and thoroughly unsatisfactory system and in certain parts of Scotland it will not bear more weight. The main part of the grant is concerned with education services. I am one of those who thinks that payment for education is a national liability, as was argued at some length when the Bill was before the House.
The question on which I should like the Secretary of State to give a definite answer is how much allowance he is making in the figures for salaries. It is difficult to judge how far he expects to be able to expand the services unless we know what estimate he has made of the salaries which are to be paid.
The question of salaries is of the greatest importance. More and more responsibilities are being thrown on public servants of all kinds, yet the payments to them lag further and further behind those offered in private industry. This is one of the most serious aspects of what I might call the Galbraith thesis. I refer not to the distinguished Joint Under-Secretary, who is a member of the Government, but to the more distinguished American Galbraith, who has pointed out that there has been a tendency for the public sector of modern society as a whole to lag behind the private sector. What has been underestimated

is the importance of payments to the public sector if we are to get the right calibre of people to run not only education, but all the other services.
From time to time, we consider the separate services. We have just considered the police. What we do for the police affects the Army and the public services in general. It is high time that we had a general review of the kind of emoluments that we now have to offer and the effect which increasing the emoluments in certain services has upon other services.
I trust that when the Government reply to this debate, they will meet the innumerable points which have been made and will give consideration to how much extra money the Secretary of State expects to be absorbed simply in paying extra salaries and, therefore, how much, if any, is left over for any development of the services which are estimated for in the Order.

8.15 p.m.

Mr. William Hannan: I wanted to make the same point as that made by the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Grimond) about salaries and priorities in regard to expenditure. It seems to me that the Government are not acting in accord with modern needs and with the advice which is given by those who are knowledgeable in these matters.
I want, first, to refer to the item of child-care and welfare services and to repeat part of what I said in an Adjournment debate not so long ago, when the Joint Under-Secretary replied, concerning the maternity services and the need to do something in the City of Glasgow.
It may come as something of a surprise to many hon. Members to realise that in the City of Glasgow, despite the valiant efforts of the welfare workers, there has been no marked reduction in infant mortality in the past five years. The figure has remained more or less static at thirty-five per thousand. Indeed, in 1959, the report of the medical officer of health indicated that the figure had increased slightly to 35·4 per thousand. This sort of figure nowadays, when we are talking in terms of thousands of millions of £s, is wrong. Indeed, the estimate contains an increase of only £20,000 in child-care services spread


over the whole of Scotland at a time when almost thirty-six children out of every thousand in Glasgow lose their lives. This is something which the Secretary of State and the Department must examine.
One of the greatest weaknesses in Glasgow and a factor which contributes to the increase is, as the medical officer of health of Glasgow has said, the shortage of maternity beds. Only last week, the Joint Under-Secretary gave me a reply in detail which was no different from that which he gave me a year ago in an Adjournment debate. Not one additional bed has been provided during that time. Of course, we get plenty of promises. This is not good enough for the circumstances of today. There are prospects of increased accommodation at Yorkhill Hospital when the buildings go up. In the meantime, however, infants and their mothers are not receiving the attention that they should.
In the estimates there is something of an increase for the education services. Again, however, I join the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland in saying that in comparison with other countries, our education in the national setting—indeed, in the international setting—is quite insufficient for its purpose and should become a national charge. The whole purpose of the change in local Government expenditure was precisely that increased expenditure would be thrown upon the ratepayers. That was the whole purpose of the new method of grant.
Surely, the Secretary of State is aware of the estimate by his Education Department that to reduce over-size classes, to fill vacancies for teachers, to replace the number of unqualified teachers and to dispense with the services of re-employed teachers over the age of 70, we need 3,200 additional teachers. This is the estimate of the right hon. Gentleman's Department. How can this need be covered by figures such as those we now have before us?
At the moment the number of re-employed retired teachers over 70 years of age in Scotland is 231, which is an increase of thirty in 1959 over 1958. This is not the way to solve our educational problems. The number of uncertificated teachers has increased from 626 in 1958 to 1,936 in 1959. These are some of the aspects which are not being covered

adequately in the estimates. These are two of the principal problems which I wanted to put to the House. If the Secretary of State really means to carry out a programme of better technical training for young people between 15 and 18 years of age, which on his own admission is the greatest task facing the Government in education, much more imagination and greater daring will be required in approaching the subject than the estimates seem to show.
Two-thirds of our young people between 15 and 18, during three of their most vital and impressionable years, do not receive adequate teaching and training. In a society that boasts that we have never had it so good, it seems to me that too much is already devoted to the vulgar and the shoddy and not enough to more desirable purposes.
I have drawn attention before to the fire service. As my hon. Friend Member for Hamilton (Mr. T. Fraser) has suggested, the local authorities are really faced with a problem. More officers are required to deal with fire prevention and protection from fire. This aspect of the problem is not adequately covered. The Secretary of State knows that at the moment a committee is considering the great conflagrations that have taken place in distilleries and other places in Scotland. He may argue that he will await its report before dealing with the problem as a whole. In the meantime, local authorities are faced with the problem with quite inadequate resources to meet it. I ask the Secretary of State to review the estimates and to do what is possible to improve the situation.

8.23 p.m.

Mr. Harry Gourlay: In his concluding remarks the Secretary of State for Scotland said that the relevant expenditure of the local authorities is rising. Then, with a rather beaming smile, he added, "So is the grant rising, too", giving the House the impression that he was completely self-satisfied about the extent of the increases mentioned in the Order. But does the right hon. Gentleman realise the enormous increase in the rate burdens on the ratepayers of Scotland?
Let us briefly examine the position. In 1945, about £25 million were collected from Scottish ratepayers. In 1951, £32


million were collected, an increase over the six years of £7 million. The record for the following six years shows that in 1957 the ratepayers had to contribute £63 million to the cost of local authority services, an increase of £31 million in six years. This, of course, may be what we are told is controlled inflation as practised by the Tory Government. In May this year the local authority of Kirkcaldy increased the rates by 1s. 6d. If it had not raided a reserve fund at the instigation of some friends of the Secretary of State in that town, the increase would have been 2s. 6d.
But we need not be surprised at these figures. We were warned about this in Cmnd. Paper 208, in paragraph 17, headed, "Reduction in Grants" which reads:
The Government's view is that this opportunity should be taken to make some reduction in the level of Exchequer grants.
Yet, year after year, the Minister expounds and extols the virtues of increasing grants, and, of course, he must recognise that the increases are falling behind very largely the increase in local authority expenditure required to meet the expanding services that the authorities administer.
This Order proposes a grant of £57 million in 1961–62 and £59 million in 1962–63, but if we look back to the last three years in which we had specific percentage grants we find that the services covered by the block grant in this Order have shown an increase of £4¾ million a year. Therefore, on that basis, and assuming that local authority services were expanding at the same rate, whereas they should be expanding at even a greater developing rate at this time, the grants for 1961–62 would be £59¼ million, instead of £57 million and for 1962–63, £64 million instead of £59 million. When, therefore, we compare the present grant system with the previous system we are entitled to say that Scottish local authorities are having a very raw deal.
Is the Minister quite sure that he is being sufficiently generous in the grants that he is proposing to make for the next two years, or will he find himself this year in the same position as he was in 1959–60 when, shortly after the new grant system came into operation, he had to

ask the authority of the House to alter the grant in an upward direction, as he had been previously warned from this side of the House would be necessary? Or does the right hon. Gentleman anticipate, as my hon. Friend the Member for Dunbartonshire, East (Mr. Bence) did, that perhaps we are to have a reducing Bank Rate over the next two years. Will it be that by 1962–63 we shall have a Bank Rate of 3 per cent.? Is that the reason for not having a sufficiently large increase in the proposed grants?
The right hon. Gentleman referred to education and the reduction in the size of classes. We should very much welcome a reduction to the standard size laid down in the education code. Has any account been taken of that possibility? I know that we will be told of difficulties in recruiting teachers, but these are factors that will be taken into account in calculating the grant. After all, the quality of education is as important as the quantity. Has he taken account of increased university population and the greater numbers being attracted into the higher forms in the high schools?
The Secretary of State has also failed to provide, particularly in the East of Scotland, sufficient hospital accommodation for the old people and the chronic sick. This in itself is throwing a very heavy financial responsibility on the local authorities in the area, where they have to provide additional home helps and an increased number of health visitors. These factors affect my constituency, but they might not affect the whole of the Scottish local authorities, so to some extent Kirkcaldy is being penalised under this grant system whereas it would not have been penalised under the old percentage grant system.
I reinforce my argument with some figures. In the East Fife area there are only 4·5 beds per thousand of the population over the age of 65 compared with 11·2 beds per thousand of the population over 65 in England and Wales five years ago. There is a growing demand for provision by the Government for this.
The right hon. Gentleman also referred to the fire service and said that some regard had been paid to the increased strengths that were required.


An examination into the fire service is required, particularly into wages and conditions, and especially in view of the latest increase to the police. As some of my hon. Friends have said, the new increase in police pay is bound to affect all other local authority services but none more than the fire service, particularly when we remember the danger to which firemen can be called at any moment, such as the disastrous fire in Glasgow recently.
I join with my hon. Friend the Member for Hamilton (Mr. T. Fraser) in deploring the lack of information contained in this Order, especially about the details of distribution of the grants. In the English Order discussed earlier, very full details were given, together with a comprehensive list of authorities and the grants they would receive. The Secretary of State is, in effect, asking us, without the necessary detailed information, to buy a pig in a poke. It might well be described as a most misleading prospectus.
Two years ago the right hon. Gentleman said:
… we can fairly claim that we are fulfilling our promise to give local authorities increased financial independence and more freedom to manage their own affairs."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 9th December, 1958; Vol. 597, c. 211.]
If local authorities were enjoying increased freedom to the same extent as the small increases in grant proposed in the Order, that would be all right and they would no doubt accept this, but the practice is far removed from the theory which the right hon. Gentleman expounded on that occasion. I suggest that he issues a White Paper setting out the freedoms which have been given to the local authorities by this General Grant Order. I question whether they would cover even one page, let alone three pages, as this Report does.
Only yesterday I was, in company with certain officials land members of Fife County Council, interviewing the right hon. Gentleman about another matter in connection with school building. To some extent the question of the freedom of local authorities is tied up with that position. We deplore the inadequacy of the grants and regret the freedom which the right hon. Gentleman has given local authorities to increase the rates still further.

8.34 p.m.

Mr. William Small: In the short time available to me, I want to concentrate on the need for consultation with local authorities about general grants. While we have no real evidence about the consultations which took place between the Secretary of State and local authorities, it is clear from the table in the Appendix to the White Paper that it is the right hon. Gentleman who determines what the grants for each of the services shall be.
I am amazed by the smallness of the amount devoted to physical training and recreation. The figure of 0·01 appears five times in the estimates of expenditure for the five years 1959 to 1963 inclusive. There is not a penny increase in that figure of 0·01, which means £10,000 only to be spent on physical training and recreation. That small sum of money is all that is given for running classes, swimming classes and all the other forms of recreation and physical activity provided for Scotland's youth.
The nation has recently agreed that extra pay should be given to the police, because of the so-called crime wave. The recent report about the treatment of first offenders has also illustrated the need for action, and we have had to increase the pay of probation officers as well as that of the police, yet here is something which can be used to influence young people in our community.
Paragraph 2 (c) of the White Paper speaks of
the need for developing those services and the extent to which, having regard to general economic conditions, it is reasonable to develop those services.
We talk of having regard to general economic conditions when we should be considering social conditions. Here was an opportunity, which has now been lost, to affect the pattern of community life. Here was an opportunity for local authorities to influence young people in their areas. I trust that the right hon. Gentleman will reconsider the very low figure provided for physical training and recreation.

8.37 p.m.

Mr. William Ross: I am sure that by this time the Secretary of State will have regretted that he introduced the Order at such short notice. It must be obvious to him that hon.


Members on this side of the House, vigilant as always in the affairs of local authorities and the wellbeing of the people of Scotland, would have liked much more information. However, with his hurried introduction of the Order and of this debate so soon after the publication of the terms of the general grant, he has not even had time to prepare a proper speech. Indeed, the debate has taken Tory Members from Scotland so completely by surprise that they are not even here.

Mr. Willis: They are looking it up.

Mr. W. Hamilton: They are on the night train.

Mr. Ross: Anyone who examines the Order and hopes to find any relevant information, even in the table in the White Paper, will look long and in vain. There are only two or three lines which would not be relevant to the Order introduced last year, or to an Order introduced next year. Everything on the first page is stereotyped and printing costs could have been saved by keeping the type set.
The next page refers to the rate of relevant expenditure and all that was required was a change of two or three figures. The only difference is that
legislation to place the Post Office on a fully commercial basis is proposed; so that in the next grant period charges will be made for the use of the mail in the registration of electors.
This is to slight the House of Commons. In view of what we were promised during the passing of the 1958 Measure and in view of the quotations by my hon. Friend the Member for Hamilton (Mr. T. Fraser), we are entitled to claim that we have not had any justification for a single figure in the table in the appendix, not even about the mechanics of the calculation of the general grant which is laid down in the Statute and repeated in the Order. How did the Secretary of State for Scotland arrive at this figure of general grant and what proportion of it relates to the education service?
The right hon. Gentleman has a considerable responsibility in this. He has no right to say that there is an awful lot of figures and he therefore cannot be expected to give them to the House. His Department asked the Scottish local authorities to send in their estimates. His Department changed those estimates in

relation to the fluctuations that were expected in the demands for the various services and their probable development. His Department made the changes after its crystal-gazing act of estimating what the cost of living would be in 1962 and 1963. The right hon. Gentleman should have in his possession every figure that was considered, and those figures should be made available to the House.
The right hon. Gentleman asked for suggestions about what should be in the next Order. I suggest that he gives us as much information as possible. He should state the basis of his calculations, his estimate of the changes that may be expected in demand, his estimate of the probable development of the services, and his estimate of the increase of costs.
There must be a formula for working this out. If there had not been one, there would have been no final figure. If there is no formula, the figures are meaningless. The Order in its present form gives us little or no chance to examine the justification for the figures given by the Minister.
Let us consider what the right hon. Gentleman said about education. In his opening speech, which was supposed to be enlightening, he threw at us an amalgam of half a dozen perorations that he has used when winding up on education, on technical education, on mental health and on everything else. He did not give us a single fact. Everything he said was based on hope and there was no indication of the extent to which that hope would be realised in the two years under discussion.
We know that £20,000 is the figure for next year for the development of the mental health services. Some of the aspects of the mental health services are, and have been for a long time, the responsibility of local authorities. This is not something new which they have come upon by surprise. The right hon. Gentleman knows that the kind of thing for which he asked local authorities in relation to the last Mental Health Act was asked for and presented by local authorities in 1947.
In local services, the kind of progress we can expect is £20,000 next year, and in the following year only another £90,000. We can only guess at the effect


on those figures of the current increases in salaries. They will probably eat up that £20,000 in the first year, and we do not know what will be the position in the second year. Evidently the right hon. Gentleman does not expect any development at all, yet we have all this window-dressing about the great changes that we can expect in services for the mentally handicapped and in providing residential accommodation for the mentally deficient for which we have been waiting for two years. There are more people waiting to get in than are presently in these institutions. This is a case of filling the shop window with goods that are not for sale, or with dummies.
Let us consider the fire service. More than six years ago, when I served on the Estimates Committee, it was evident not only that the fire service was not up to strength but that individual establishments required investigation in relation to modern fire risks. Es there any indication that by 1963 we shall spend about £160,000 more than we are now spending? I cannot see it. We just have not been told. It is no good the Secretary of State saying, "You should not ask me for these figures. I will give them to you at the end of the debate."
We have not been able to debate the youth service properly in relation to the many ways in which the Albemarle Report applies to Scotland. Will anything be done at all about this? The Department spent so much time discussing educational matters with the local authorities that it appears they had little time to discuss the question of recreation and physical training.
The Secretary of State said that he and his Department drew up the estimates for that. According to him they drew up three estimates, and I want the House to consider them. They drew up the estimates for road safety, police traffic patrols, and physical training and recreation. By 1963 we shall be spending £10,000 more on road safety than we are spending now. What is the basis of that estimate? They did not discuss that with the local authorities. There cannot be any question of local authorities having a confused picture in this respect, because this is a picture of the right hon. Gentleman's own painting. What is the fluctuation in the demand for this service? We shall require a little more

for road safety, and I hope that we shall get it.
What about the problem of development? We need a little more action in respect of roads such as the A.8, and roads in those parts of Scotland which have been crying out for action in respect of road safety. What are we going to get by 1963? We shall have an extra £10,000.
In 1959–60 we spent £40,000 on police traffic patrols. In 1962–63 we shall spend exactly the same amount. Evidently costs have remained static there. The development of the service is apparently nil. Or is it merely a case of its being easier to put in the figure we thought of three of four years ago, without taking into account any other relevant factors?
In 1959–60 our actual expenditure on physical training and recreation was £10,000. Next year we shall spend £10,000. The year after that we shall spend £10,000. There will be no change, despite the weighty considerations involved in the increasing demand for the service. After all that we propose to do for the youth of the country there will apparently be no greater demand for physical training and recreation. This is not money coming from the Government; this is the estimated expenditure of local authorities, on which the Government grant is based.
When we come to what the grant contains we find, as compared with this year, that in two years' time local authorities will be spending an extra £13,750,000. Of that sum, which is, of course, in respect of just these services, the additional grant made is to be £7·7 million, leaving the local authorities in Scotland to face an additional expenditure of over £6 million within two years.
There are two things by which one should judge this Order. One is the adequacy of the financial provisions in relation to the services and the need for the services. In so far as we have any information, I do not think that the Government are meeting it in relation to this need. The other thing is in relation to the financial needs of the local authorities and their ability to bear the remaining share of the burden.
The Secretary of State knows that he is getting complaint after complaint from local authorities about the financial


burdens upon them at the present time. Rates have been going up, they are going up this year and they will go up next year. The Secretary of State says, "I am doing well by you. The expenditure is going up by a certain amount and I will give a little more than half, leaving you to find the odd £6 million."
The hon. Member for Glasgow, Cathcart (Mr. J. Henderson) has been a member of the town council in Glasgow and knows the headaches that any local authority has regarding this kind of thing. There is this £6 million when local authorities already know that outside these services they are faced with increased burdens relating to the 50 per cent. share of the increasing cost of the police. There is the new burden which the Secretary of State is placing on local authorities if they take steps to prevent floods, and there is the new burden with regard to the provision of caravan sites. Legislation is produced in this House and the financial "buck" is passed to the local authority.
We have heard that this is only part of the picture. The rest of the picture shows Scottish local authorities struggling in a financial morass, with the Government not prepared to provide adequate help for them to meet present services, far less to develop the new services and certain aspects of existing services upon which the nation depends. So because of these things, and because we cannot divide against this Order, we must express our dissatisfaction and hope that the Secretary of State will appreciate the gravity with which we view the position.

8.52 p.m.

Miss Margaret Herbison: I am sure that the Secretary of State will by this time have realised the strong feeling which exists among hon. Members on this side of the House. It has been created on two counts. The first is the fact that this Order and White Paper were produced so late that no Member representing a Scottish constituency has been able to contact his or her local authority or the bodies which negotiate with the Secretary of State, which to me is a serious matter. We are being asked to pass this Order with no idea at all about what our local athorities feel on the matter.
The second reason for this strong feeling is the disgraceful lack of information on which we have to try to decide whether this Order be good or bad. When I compare this flimsy little Report presented to Scottish Members with what was received by hon. Members representing English and Welsh constituencies, I begin to wonder whether the Secretary of State feels that he can treat this House in such a scurvy manner.
The third cause for the strong feeling is the inadequacy of the grants outlined in the White Paper. Like some of my hon. Friends, I want to deal with a number of them. I remember how last year when we were dealing with that great social Measure, the Mental Health (Scotland) Bill, promises were made about the improvements which were to be made, particularly in community care for the mentally ill. Because of that, the first part of this Order at which I looked was that dealing with local health services. It was because I was extremely interested in that part that I intervened when the Minister spoke.
These local health services cover many sections of our Health Service. The Secretary of State said that we were looking forward to a considerable expansion in mental health provisions. Those were almost his own words. Then he told us that what we were aiming at was a comprehensive community service. In other words, this was not something which was to happen in the dim and distant future. He was speaking of this Order, which covers us only until 1962–63. In his words, we were to have a comprehensive community service. Then, when he was questioned, he said that what is right and possible in this field will be done.
What does the English Minister think is right? What does he suggest the Government are to do? In the English White Paper in paragraph 21 we find these words:
There is a special need for an increase in the number of training centres provided for children and adults and in the amount of residential accommodation provided for patients who may need residential care but do not need, or no longer need, treatment as hospital in-patients.
That outlines what the Minister in England felt would be proper community care and what we felt was right. I wonder whether our Secretary of State feels that that is possible in Scotland.


If he thinks it is possible on the increase which is being given here, I say—and I am sure I shall be proved right—that when we come to the end of 1962–63 we shall be nowhere near an adequate community provision.
In 1961–62 we are to have an increase of £20,000 to cover the whole of the local authorities. I should imagine that they will be getting into their stride by then in providing these residential homes and training centres for those of our people who are mentally ill. In the following year, 1962–63, it will be £110,000. How many training centres shall we get for £110,000? How many residential places will there be for those who have been in hospital and who, according to the English Minister, will no longer need to remain in hospital, for £110,000—that is if we have no development in any other part of our local health services? That is the complete increase we are being given. The Secretary of State cannot tell me that during those years—particularly after the announcement, with which I agree, about police salaries—there will not be claims for increases in salary in these services.
Now I turn to what the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Health said, because we may get the same answer from the Secretary of State, although he told us at the beginning there was to be a comprehensive community service. Someone must have challenged the Minister of Health and his Parliamentary Secretary said that it was not the money or the buildings that was the limiting factor; it was the lack of social workers or people to do the job. If we turn to the Minister's Report for England and Wales, we find in paragraph 22:
The same objectives are being pursued through the expansion of the health visiting and social work services (on both of which valuable advice has been received from working parties appointed by the Government), the provision of improved welfare services for mothers and young children,
and so on. I wonder that the English Minister had the nerve to mention these two committees.
During the progress of the Mental Health (Scotland) Bill, we tried to move an amendment, which was ruled out of order, to get the Government to implement a little of the Younghusband Report. Only if the Government implement

the recommendations of that Report shall we get the social workers who, the other Minister says, constitute the limiting factor. The Government cannot have it both ways. A very great responsibility rests with the Government, and a great deal of blame must lie on the Government, first, because they have taken no action yet on the Younghusband Report, and, secondly, because of the miserable increase in the estimates for local health services.
That is only one part of the local health services. Let me now turn to some of the others. I had the Convenor of the Lanarkshire County Council Health Committee speaking at a meeting of my constituents on Saturday. He is a most earnest young man, intensely interested in his work and determined to give to the people of Lanarkshire the very best local health service that can possibly be provided. One of the things that had perturbed him greatly was that this year there was an increase in the number of deaths per thousand live births. I was out of the Chamber at the time, but understand that my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Maryhill (Mr. Hannan) said that there was a slight increase also in Glasgow.
Does the Secretary of State accept no responsibility for this? In the estimates that he has given us, has he allowed for better ante-natal and post-natal provision by the local authorities? If he has, how much of this £20,000 and this £110,000 is to be given to the maternity services of the local authorities?
The Convenor of the Lanarkshire County Council Health Committee told us on Saturday that it had decided almost to double the number of health visitors, because, being composed of good people, it had tried with the medical officers of health to find out why there had been an increase in infantile mortality. It had examined every aspect of the subject and had not found all the answers but had come to the conclusion that it would need to increase the number of health visitors. If Glasgow decides to do that, and if other local authorities in Scotland decide to do it, where is the money to come from, Out of these miserable amounts of £20,000 and £110,000? I have covered only two aspects of the health services, but I think that what I have said and what


my hon. Friends have said shows how miserably inadequate the provision is.
I now turn to another matter—the education service. Again, we have no help from the Secretary of State's White Paper, but how glibly he spoke! If only his speech were reported and no one else's speech, we should think that everything in Scottish education was fine. He talked about the new schools, the extra teachers we already have and the extra teachers we shall get, and he said that, in the grant, provision had been made for all this, for transport facilities and for bursary facilities.
I understand that my hon. Friend the Member for Hamilton (Mr. T. Fraser) gave the example of what the Lanarkshire Education Committee—because he could give no other example—thinks about the provisions. He spoke of a plan for five years. I understand that the Minister's own officials have said that this plan is needed to meet what the Secretary of State himself has asked. The cost is about £16 million, and the share of Lanarkshire, the second biggest education authority in Scotland, is about £7 million. What about Glasgow, such places as Orkney and Shetland and other areas where there are such great difficulties?
If we look at the figures for 1961–62 we see that we are to have an increase of £3·1 million for education and the following year an increase of £2·68 million. Will that cover all that we need in education in Scotland? We want to know. In our debate last Thursday it was made clear that in some instances we are falling very far behind England, and as a Scotswoman and a previous teacher that causes me great grief, as I think it does all my hon. Friends. What part of the estimate of £3·1 million and £2·68 million is for building? What part of it is for the increased number of teachers of which the Secretary of State spoke, leaving out the question of salaries—because if there were a salary increase we might have another Order?
What part of it is for bursaries? Has the Secretary of State given any thought at all to increasing the bursaries of those who are still at school between 15 and 18 years of age? He and the Minister of Education have spoken about what they intend to do about the Anderson

Committee's Report. Many of us on this side of the House are anxious to know what the Secretary of State intends to do to enable more and more of our children to stay at school and then to benefit from technological and university education. That is where the grave weakness in the present bursary system lies. Is there included in these sums any figure for increases in senior school bursaries?
My hon. Friend the Member for Dunbartonshire, West (Mr. Steele) and others have drawn attention to the fact that no increase has been granted in respect of physical training and recreation. Yet we have had the Albemarle Report. The Secretary of State may tell us that any improvement they mean to make as a result of the Albemarle Report, which he himself mentioned, will come out of the education assessment, because that is what we find in the English White Paper. It looks as though anything the Government do under the Albemarle Report will come out of the education grant. Does that mean that this miserable sum will have to cover any improvements which will be made as a result of the Government accepting the recommendations of Albemarle? An examination of the details makes one realise how miserable is the amount proposed to be allocated to all the education authorities in Scotland.
Even if some attention will be paid to Albemarle, it still leaves us with physical training and recreation. Whatever else is covered, £10,000 a year are to suffice for the whole of Scotland. I am tired of reading in the Press each day about juvenile delinquency. I am tired of all the complaints which adults make about young people. Our young people are what adults make them. The parents' influence on their children is often a material factor. The school, the church, and the Sunday school play their part, but we as members of Parliament cannot shuffle away our responsibilities to the young people. We should ensure that recreation facilities are provided for them.
I should not be surprised if some big business firms spent more than £10,000 a year on entertainment alone. We are to spend £10,000 on physical training and recreation.
I hope that when the Secretary of State replies he will be able to give us the information for which we have asked. He said that there had been discussions with the local authority associations and that agreement had been reached. We do not know the nature of the agreement. Is it rightly called an agreement if local authorities say what they think they should have, the officials state the length to which the Government can go, and there is then some discussion on it?
From what I have heard about my own local authority, there was not agreement as regards school building. If we had had time to contact the local authority associations and each Member of Parliament had contacted his local authority, we might have been presented with a very different picture.
When the right hon. Gentleman introduced these estimates he thought that he was doing very well by Scotland and that we should have a nice, pleasant, happy debate. We are too concerned about our people to allow these estimates to pass without the most minute examination. Our minute examination has been greatly hindered by lack of information.
Finally, I hope that the debate has taught the Secretary of State and his Under-Secretaries a lesson, namely that we want information and, above all, better provision to be made, particularly in those respects which have been mentioned.

9.14 p.m.

Mr. Maclay: At the beginning of the debate I asked for advice. I seem to have got it, so I do not complain at all. I have received lots of advice. The interesting thing is that, as the advice has developed, it has more and more confirmed me in my original view, namely, that the type of information I have given in the White Paper, short as it may be, is the essential information for the major purpose of this discussion, unless the Government are to state every detailed figure about every item which goes to make up the expenditure.
The real point that I would commend to hon. Members is this. The principle of the general grant is that individual sums of money should not be hypothecated to individual services. The whole theory of it is that we build up the relevant expenditure. There must

be some basis. We do not pluck a figure from the air—although after this discussion one is tempted to think that that is the the way to do it. One has to get a figure and build up. But if, after that, one goes into precise details of how much is intended for each service the money automatically gets hypothecated, or tends to get hypothecated, to those particular services.
As I tried to explain at the beginning, the method by which these figures are arrived at is that we start with the local authorities themselves sending in very detailed estimates, which are lumped together—and they have to be lumped together in order to produce the final lump sum figure. A good deal of today's attack has not really been so much on me and on the Government as on the local authorities themselves—

Miss Herbison: Oh, no.

Mr. Maclay: Yes, because hon. Members opposite have been asking, "Why not more for this service and more for that service?" One hon. Member spoke of the "Chancellor of the Exchequer's mean little figure." It is not the Chancellor of the Exchequer's mean little figure, nor is it mine. What appear here as the estimates of relevant expenditure are figures built up as a result of the discussions I have described, and the agreement that was reached at the end as to what was proper. When the local authorities are asked to send in their estimates, they are not inhibited as to what they put in except by their own ideas of what is right and proper, having in mind all the considerations that local authorities, as well as the House of Commons and the Government must have in mind in deciding what is practicable and possible in providing services.
Hon. Members must appreciate that it is not possible for any Government, no matter how well-intentioned, to do everything at once for the country simultaneously, regardless of cost and regardless of the effect on the whole community. I know that it is right when in Opposition to try to chivvy—I nearly said more Government out of the money, and that is not a bad phrase—more money out of the Government. However, hon. Members must be responsible about this, because local authorities are very responsible bodies, too. They do


not just plunge into anything and everything they would like to do if they had the money. Instead, they look at what is reasonable in the current conditions of the country and of their own local community. They know that they cannot ask for the moon, because they do not expect to get that either from the Government or from the rates.
Certain hon. Members ought to be careful in some of their criticisms, because they are really attacking local authorities—

Mr. Ross: rose—

Mr. Maclay: No, I will not give way. I am developing a perfectly good argument, and hon. Members must take it—

Miss Herbison: The right hon. Gentleman was indicting the local authorities.

Mr. Maclay: No, the hon. Lady is wrong. I said that certain hon. Members, when criticising the extent of relevant expenditure were, in fact, criticising the figures put in by local authorities—

Mr. Ross: Publish the figures, then.

Mr. Maclay: I have a great many questions to answer, and prefer to debate this one hard because it is an important point, and the sooner we get clear where we stand on this question of how much detail can be expected in a debate on the general grant, the better.
At the risk of repeating myself, I say that the local authorities produce their estimates. Those estimates are aggregated and discussed—

Mr. Ross: And then cut.

Mr. Maclay: —and it is perfectly permissible for the local authorities to put in whatever they think is right and proper. Being responsible people, they do that.
The hon. Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross) interjected the word "cut". In the process of discussion, some figures go up and some go down. The process of cutting is not the only process done by my Department in these negotiations. I can give hon. Members some figures of how it went; they are round figures, not broken down into detail. The whole discussion this time started with local authority estimates of relevant expenditure,

aggregated, running for 1961–62 at £92·16 million and for 1962–63 at £95·7 million. I do not mind giving these figures.
My Department made certain additions for small services, as I said in my opening speech. That was done merely because they were services which it was not easy for the local authorities to estimate for, and it was quicker for my Department to estimate them and discuss them. They were not imposed on the local authorities; they were discussed and agreed.

Mr. Ross: That was an addition.

Mr. Maclay: That was an addition. Then there were some deductions in the first instance by the Departments which took part in these talks, amounting to £2·21 million for the first period and £2·91 for the second period. There were then further discussions. There were restorations and additions made. These amounted to £1·09 million in the first period and £1·27 million in the second period. There were then further additions made when my noble Friend the Minister of State met the local authorities, and we finished with the finally agreed estimates in the White Paper, £91·45 million and £94·33 million.
This is a process of open discussion, and all this idea about ruthless cutting by the Department is, of course, just so much nonsense. It was not done on the basis of the money not being available but on the basis of finding out the realistic estimates of what was likely to be spent by the local authorities in total.

Mr. A. Woodburn: I have listened to the right hon. Gentleman's exposition with great interest. There is a point which seems not to be covered by what he is saying. A great deal has been made of the Government's promises about what they will do with regard to mental health and other things. When these programmes come forward, does the right hon. Gentleman take into account whether the local authorities are carrying through what he has promised the House will be done?

Mr. Maclay: An element in these discussions, of course, is the various Acts of Parliament which have been passed


by the House which put certain obligations on the local authorities. A great deal of stress has been laid on mental health this evening. I must remind hon. Members that the Mental Health Act was passed not very long ago. There has to be time for the local authorities to estimate what they can do and assess it. We are running a year behind the English, anyway. I have detailed some of the things which will be in the minds of local authorities and, of course, they were in our minds when we were discussing the figures. I can say that on that particular item, at the suggestion of my Departments, the figures were put up a bit. That did happen.
I quite understand the attitude of hon. Members and I appreciate that it seems desirable to them that full details should be available. Probably, I should be saying the same thing about getting details if I were sitting on their benches. However, hon. Members must realise that the whole point of general grant—I repeat this—is not to have individual sums of money hypothecated to individual subjects. If we start going into the great detail that hon. Members have been asking for today, that is exactly what will happen.

Mr. T. Fraser: Does not the right hon. Gentleman understand that the only way to build up the total sum is to get hold of all the individual sums? Does he not realise that we in the House of Commons, who have to consider these things, are just as much entitled to this information as he is? It may be that his hon. Friends who ought to be sitting around and behind him, are not interested in the subject at all and accordingly have not put in any appearance whatever today. We, on the other hand, are interested.
When the right hon. Gentleman speaks of the estimates as being the local authorities' own estimates, has he in mind what I had to tell him during my speech? Did he listen when I made it quite clear that I said what I did after having had conversations with the elected representatives in the County of Lanark? Were they misinforming me when they told me about the way in which they built up their estimates?

Mr. Willis: rose—

Mr. Maclay: Really now, this is my speech. The hon. Member has had his

shot. I gave way once. He must not go on asking me to give way just because I gave way once. Now he has put out of my head what I was going to say to the hon. Member for Hamilton (Mr. T. Fraser). I shall have to be much more stern, if I may, Mr. Speaker, about interruptions.
I want to go through many of the points which have been raised.

Mr. Willis: rose—

Mr. Maclay: The hon. Member has had a long enough innings for the time being. No doubt he will have others. I will pick up many of the major points, because I want to answer a lot of detailed questions.

Mr. T. Fraser: What about the point that I raised?

Mr. Maclay: If I miss the hon. Member's point, he can ask me about it again at the end of my speech and I will try to deal with it.
I want to come back to the speech of the hon. Member for Hamilton and get one fact straight. The White Paper and the Order were available in the House on 1st December. I have noted carefully the feeling that there was not enough time between the laying of the Order and the debate. The only thing that puzzles me is that I understand this was arranged between the usual channels.

Mr. Fraser: What the right hon. Gentleman is saying is important. These things necessarily had to be agreed through the usual channels before the White Paper and the Order were available. They had to be agreed before the Leader of the House announced this business last Thursday, when these documents were not available to hon. Members.

Mr. Maclay: I am not certain that I understand the hon. Member's point, but I agree that there was a very short time between the laying of the Order and the debate. I think that it has put me in certain difficulties, but there it is. There is a timetable for all things and there are usual channels, but they do not always produce the ideal timetable and the ideal result.
I now come to the second point of the hon. Member for Hamilton which I think was very much emphasised by


the hon. Lady the Member for Lanarkshire, North (Miss Herbison), and that was the length and detail of the Report. Hon. Members who have studied the English Report will know that a good deal of it was taken up by matter on the distribution formula which is not relevant to this debate.

Mr. Fraser: There are 27 paragraphs which are relevant.

Mr. Maclay: I was coming to that. The hon. Member must wait. If hon. Members study the rest of the English document which is relevant, they will see that it spells out a certain amount more than is given in the Scottish White Paper. Hon. Members, such as the hon. Lady, picked out pieces of the English document and at once attacked it like mad. They criticise me for, in my opening speech, repeating things that I had said in other debates. That is bound to happen in a speech or in a White Paper. This is merely the result of policy determined by Acts of Parliament which relate to local authorities. I have taken the point that hon. Members think that we could expand this a bit, but I do not want them to be under any illusions. I do not think that it will be practicable even in future years to go into great detail as to precisely which sums of money are involved in which detailed services.
The hon. Member for Hamilton asked what were the local authority estimates. I dealt with that when I gave the picture early in my speech of how the discussions started and what relevant expenditure figures were put in by local authorities. First, I think that I should deal with the fire services, as hon. Members were interested in that. The figures in the Appendix of the White Paper were accepted by local authorities and they made no suggestion in the negotiation about the grant that they were unable to carry out the requirements of the circular concerning standards of manning. That was the specific question which the hon. Gentleman asked and that is the information which I have.
I now turn to the Lanarkshire building programme and how it fits into the general scene. We have not available at the moment figures about Lanarkshire over a long period, but returns from authorities just completed show that the

work done in the six months from April to September, 1960, totals just under £6 million, of which Lanarkshire's share was £0·64 million, which was 10·7 per cent. of the total. Strangely enough, the county's population is also 10·7 per cent. of Scotland's total population. The speed of what has happened is not because of Government restrictions. A good deal more work would have been done in recent periods had it not been for bad weather. [Interruption.] That is an element. Hon. Members must realise that we live in a world in which there is rain, hail and snow, as well as hon. Members opposite screaming for the moon.

Miss Herbison: The Minister ought not to be so thin-skinned when my hon. Friends jeer at the weather. What about 1947 and what we got all over the country about the shortage of coal from people who ought to have known better? It is far better for the right hon. Gentleman to keep his temper.

Mr. Speaker: Order. I have great difficulty in relating the troubles of the winter of 1947 to this Order. Let us get on.

Mr. Maclay: I am disappointed, but not surprised, by your intervention, Mr. Speaker, because I was looking forward to following that one up, although I did not think that it would be a proper thing to do. I assure the hon. Lady that I was far from losing my temper. I was trying to encourage an hon. Member opposite who made the interjection.

Mr. Ross: Get back to the moon.

Mr. Maclay: The moon is not in our terms of reference either. I apologise for introducing that irrelevancy.
Various figures have been given for Lanarkshire's school-building programme. I am still studying them with my Department. I do not quite understand the figures given by the hon. Member, but I do not doubt them. What I have understood all along is that in the timing of the programme there is an element of optimism as to what is and is not practicable however desirable it may be. This may have led to a difference of view on Lanarkshire's problem.
The hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Grimond) raised one or


two points and referred particularly to the rate burden in his part of the world. I do not wish in any way to sound as if I am being over-complacent, but it is necessary to realise what happens in the hon. Member's constituency under the present arrangements for assistance. I understand that in 1959–60, the general grant to Zetland represented a rate of over £3 in the £ and in the same year the equalisation grant represented 87·3 per cent. of the county's net expenditure after receiving other grants and receipts, which is roughly equivalent, I am informed—I could not work this out myself in a hurry—to a rate of over £7 in the £. I mention these figures to show that the various systems of grant aid to local authorities produce that result in an area which badly needs that assistance. I know that the hon. Member realises this.
The hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland raised a point concerning salaries, a subject which was touched on by one or two other hon. Members. If there are changes of salary in the future, they can come under consideration under Section 2 (2) of the Act, as happened previously. The hon. Member for Kirkcaldy Burghs (Mr. Gourlay), I think unintentionally, chided me for being wrong in our earlier grant estimates because we had to come back later to alter them. That was what I thought the hon. Member said. What happened was that under the specific provision in the Act, we came back when new considerations had to be taken into account. It was, I believe, surprising to hon. Members opposite that that happened.
The question of salaries and their relativity to all the various functions opens up a wide and fascinating subject, on which, even with the greatest ingenuity, I could not keep strictly within the terms of order, because it raises the question of the relativity of a policeman to a teacher and to a local authority official and that is not appropriate to this debate.
The hon. Member for Dunbartonshire, West (Mr. Steele) raised the matter of postage and electoral registration, which is a small but interesting point. This is a figure which, having been taken for the first time, is available in a form in which I can give it to the hon. Member. It is estimated that the cost of postage is

£16,500 a year and in the general grant Order about £20,000 was included for relevant expenditure. It is easy to give that kind of figure for something that has happened for the first time.

Mr. Steele: I thank the right hon. Gentleman for at least giving me a figure.

Mr. Maclay: The hon. Member is very lucky, because this is one that comes in for the first time and it is possible to sort it out.
I have been asked about the proportion of grant to relevant expenditure. In the last debate on this subject I gave some figures and tonight I can say—and it is perfectly easy for hon. Members to work it out—that the proportion is even higher now, and is running at 62·4 per cent. I hope that there are not many English hon. Members present. If hon. Members are going to talk about what the English are getting and we are not getting I warn them to go pretty carefully, because if they study the whole background of general grant and the figures that I have given they will find that we did not come out of it very badly.

Mr. Willis: rose—

Mr. Maclay: As to the development of local health services, the figures in the appendix to the White Paper are, of course, based on the estimates of the local authorities themselves. A deduction was made during the negotiations in respect of the boarding out of mental defectives. This was because this service has been taken over by the National Assistance Board. On the other hand, a small addition was made to the local authority figures for 1962–63 in respect of the growth of the mental health services.

Mr. Willis: I am exceedingly grateful for at last being allowed to ask once again why there is the fantastic difference between the increase for the health services in Scotland of £110,000 compared with a figure of £11 million for England.

Mr. Maclay: I have not looked up that point, and not because I think that it would be unwise to do so. I do not spend my whole life saying "Me, too" or getting excited because England has something which we have not. It does not make sense to do so. I do not know the reason for this discrepancy. There


obviously is one, though it cannot bear the implication that the hon. Member puts on it. It is deplorable to go through every figure, not on the basis of what we need and could use properly but because some one else is getting more. I dislike that approach intensely and I do not propose to follow it.
There is some misunderstanding about physical training and recreation, though the hon. Lady the Member for Lanarkshire, North got her finger near it. The sum of £10,000 is for expenditure by counties and burghs under the Physical Training and Recreation Act, 1937. The expenditure under that Act has been very small indeed and a good deal less than that figure, but the great proportion of the provision for physical training and recreation for young people is made under the education powers. All the mournful statements made by the hon. Member for Dunbartonshire, East (Mr. Bence), speaking as if this meant that nothing was being done for the physical training and recreation of children, are absolute nonsense.
This is only a relatively small part of the whole. An enormous amount of work goes on and various Acts are used to help provide physical training and recreation. I am informed that this particular power is largely used for items of relatively small capital expenditure dealing with village halls and some facilities in the lonelier places.
The hon. Member for Fife, West (Mr. Hamilton) puzzles me. To meet him casually on the street, he is pleasant and charming and diffident and nice, but when he speaks in this Chamber—and I say this with all seriousness—he makes extraordinarily offensive remarks, and he does himself no credit because he does not even get his facts right. He would do much better to conduct himself in the Chamber as he does outside. I am sorry that he raised the matter I discussed with a deputation which came to me two days ago. It is under very careful consideration and it was unfortunate that it should be produced in this debate. It was not a good thing to do that.

Mr. W. Hamilton: Does not the right hon. Gentleman think it relevant?

Mr. Maclay: The hon. Member should not provoke me to go into details of that today. If he is not satisfied with what I decide he can raise the matter on an Adjournment debate if he wishes. I am sorry that he raised it. I do not think that we could go into it this evening.
I have now exhausted my extensive notes in answering the question put to me. I hope Members are getting that way also. I want to make clear, on the question of proper development of the welfare services, that it is worth realising that no grant was payable for welfare services before the general grant was introduced, but expenditure incurred after 1958–59 in developing these services is relevant expenditure for purposes of general grant.
I have given a long and detailed reply and hon. Members will appreciate that it would virtually defeat the purpose of the general grant if the extremely detailed financial information for which they are pressing was available in written form. It would need a calculating machine or an electronic computer to produce answers to all the various combinations of questions that could be asked with extreme detail. I trust that this Order will now be approved by the House.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,
That the General Grant (Scotland) Order, 1960, dated 29th November, 1960, a copy of which was paid before this House on 1st December, be approved.

9.42 p.m.

Mr. Willis: I beg to move,
That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, praying that the Local Government (General Grant Transitional Adjustments) (Scotland) Regulations, 1960, dated 28th November, 1960, a copy of which was laid before this House on 1st December, be annulled.
In doing so I want, first, to congratulate English Members on the very great interest which they are showing in our affairs—a far greater interest than Conservative Scottish Members are displaying. We find that most welcome.
My purpose in moving this Motion is to seek information, but I do so with misgiving after the right hon. Gentleman's speech which we have just heard. A great number of questions asked during


the last debate were not answered. I do not think that any of the questions I put were answered. I hope that we shall be given some information about what the Secretary of State has in mind about these transitional payments.
This Order is made under Section 18 of the 1958 Act. That Section lays down certain rules which the Secretary of State must follow in computing these payments. It also gives him power to make modifications and exceptions and so on, and I wonder whether it is his intention to do that later on.
I ask that question because the Regulations apply to the year commencing on 16th May, 1961, and also to the year beginning on 16th May, 1962. In 1961, we shall enter a new era of rating and valuation in Scotland and we shall have before us a completely new basis of assessment and valuation. That new basis could be much fairer than the old as between different localities of Scotland. Would it not, therefore, be better if these transitional adjustments were made on that basis rather than on the basis of the 1957 figures, as at present?
I ask that because part of the formula upon which the calculations are made is the estimated rate required for a locality for the year 1957 and the rateable value of the area of the local authority in 1957. There is to be a big change next year, and the new basis will probably be fairer for comparison of what local authorities lose or gain.
I wonder whether the right hon. Gentleman is wise to include Regulation 5, which makes arrangements for the year beginning 16th May, 1962. That date gives him time to make alterations if he intends to do so—and I do not know whether he does. If he does, I should have thought that it would be better to limit the Regulations to one year, issuing further Regulations for the year 1961–62.
There is another question which arises in connection with the rateable valuation of the areas concerned, which is that sooner or later, I presume, we shall have a Bill for industrial rating. It may be that the right hon. Gentleman can tell us tonight when he intends to introduce such a Bill for Scotland.

Mr. Speaker: Order. That question is not in order on this Motion. This is a very narrow point and I must ask the hon. Member for Edinburgh, East (Mr. Willis) to adhere to it.

Mr. Willis: I am discussing Regulation 5 which deals with the year beginning 16th May, 1962, and suggesting that it should not have been included because of what may happen. I ask whether there will be any change before 1962, as I think there must in view of what has happened in England. If it does, should not the basis of the calculation be changed? There may be very good arguments for not changing it and I am not arguing the case one way or the other, but those are considerations which concern those of us who are interested in Scottish local government finance.
There is a great deal of speculation in Scotland about what will happen. This is one of the matters which have been discussed. Before we leave it, we ought to be given some information by the right hon. Gentleman, if not about the year beginning 16th May, 1961, at least about the year beginning 16th May, 1962.

Mr. Maclay: The hon. Gentleman wondered what I had in mind when I laid this Order before the House. I know what I had in mind when I moved it—that I would get away to get something to eat, but the hon. Gentleman has asked questions about Regulation 5.
It is desirable that local authorities should know two years ahead what to expect, and that is my main answer. It does not mean that if something arises in the interval which makes it desirable to change the basis of distribution of grants that this could not be looked at again. It would mean legislation, but one of the advantages of this method of operation is that there is reasonable certainty two years ahead of what local authorities can count on. If for any reason what the hon. Gentleman has in mind proves to be desirable, it could possibly be done. I hope that with that explanation we can conclude the business.

Mr. Willis: I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for answering at least one of the questions. On the assumption that it will be looked into, and in


the light of what will happen next year, I beg to ask leave to withdrew the Motion.

Motion, by leave, withdrawn.

COVENT GARDEN MARKET [MONEY]

Resolution reported,
That, for the purposes of any Act of the present Session to establish a Covent Garden Market Authority and vest in them lands in the Parish of Saint Paul, Covent Garden, and in the metropolitan borough of Finsbury and chattels the property of Covent Garden Market Limited; to make provision for the conduct in, and adjacent to, Covent Garden, under the control of the Covent Garden Market Authority, of activities relating to the dealing in bulk in horticultural produce; and to make provision with respect to matters arising out of the matters aforesaid, it is expedient to authorise—

(a) the issue out of the Consolidated Fund of sums required to enable the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food to make advances to the said Authority, but so that the aggregate amount outstanding by way of principal in respect of any such advances shall not at any time exceed eight million pounds;
(b) the raising under the National Loans Act, 1939, of any money required for the purpose of providing any sums to be issued as aforesaid or for the replacement of sums so issued;
(c) the payment into the Exchequer of any sums received by the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food from the said Authority in respect of advances and the issue of such sums out of the Consolidated Fund and the application of such sums, in so far as they represent principal, in redemption or repayment of debt, and in so far as they represent interest, towards meeting such part of the annual charges for the national debt as represents interest;
(d) the payment into the Exchequer of the whole or any part of any excess of the revenues of the said Authority for any period over the total sums properly chargeable by the said Authority to revenue account for that period.

Resolution agreed to.

ESTIMATES COMMITTEE

Mr. Joseph Slater discharged from the Estimates Committee; Mr. Milian added.—[Mr. Chichester-Clark.]

SITE, MANGOTSFIELD (DEVELOPMENT)

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Chichester-Clark.]

9.53 p.m.

Mr. Alan Hopkins: I am grateful for the opportunity of raising a matter which is very important to a large number of my constituents, and at the same time to sandwich among our Scottish matters something of English import. The matter which I wish to raise refers to planning permission for a public house in Down-end in my constituency.
The history is somewhat complex and I will give only a brief outline. In 1955, an application for planning permission for a site for licensed premises was put forward on behalf of the Bristol Brewery, but permission was refused on the ground that ingress and egress to the site would add dangers to the existing road junction. Later that year, and again in 1956, similar applications for planning permission were put in but were rejected. Somewhat later, the conditions varied and planning permission was granted, subject to two conditions. The first was that there should be no direct access between the site and Overndale Road, and secondly, that an unclimbable fence, to the satisfaction of the local planning authority, or a wall not less than 4 ft. 6 in. high, should be erected upon the whole of the site fronting Overndale Road. The basic reason for these conditions was that the access at the existing crossroads of Overndale Road and Cleeve Hill would result in danger to traffic, and already there is a considerable amount of traffic and considerable danger at that junction.
Somewhat later a further application was put forward, but the objections on the ground of traffic problems were withdrawn and planning permission was finally granted. At all times from 1958 onwards the Mangotsfield Urban District Council has objected strongly to the granting of this application for planning permission, and many local residents have voiced their objections not only to the planning committee but also to me, as their Member of Parliament. Those objections were heard by


the planning committee, and I have no doubt that due consideration was given to them. My argument is that insufficient weight is attached by planning committees to the feelings of local residents and to the views of an authority which represents local residents even though it has not been empowered by Parliament with the responsibilities of planning.
I now come to the end of the story. I was told last week that the owner of the site, who had received planning permission, has decided to sell it, in view of the local opposition. Even if the land is sold and the public house is not built, however, it does not seem to solve the problem. The difficulty of the road will still remain. I therefore ask my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary to reconsider the matter and to see whether the position can be reviewed and altered in the interests of road safety.
A considerable number of decisions have been rendered by the local planning authority in Gloucestershire, some of which have been the subject of articles in the Daily Telegraph and other newspapers. My hon. Friend the Member for Gloucestershire, South (Mr. Corfield) has taken a very keen interest in these matters. I do not suggest any impropriety in any sense, or at any level, but it would appear obvious that considerable concern is felt not only by my constituents but by other residents in Gloucestershire at the manner in which some applications have been granted, and the result of their being granted.
I would ask my hon. Friend whether he will consider the situation suitable for an inquiry, since this is a matter of considerable public concern. In the interests of local government as a whole, justice should not only be done—and I am certain that it is being done—but should be seen to be done.

9.59 p.m.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Housing and Local Government (Sir Keith Joseph): I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, North-East (Mr. Hopkins) for putting the case so dearly. I should like to tell him at the outset that my right hon. Friend and I appreciate how deep feelings can run on what are purely local although none the less important matters.
But the fact is that the Government have placed the responsibility for carrying out the administration of the planning Acts squarely upon the shoulders of local planning authorities. It is true that my hon. Friend has reserve powers to intervene in one form or another, but he uses them only when there has been either some gross error of more than local significance or where, coupled with a serious error, there is clear evidence of—

It being Ten o'clock, the Motion for the Adjournment of the House lapsed, without Question put.

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Chichester-Clark.]

Sir K. Joseph: —clear evidence of deliberate failure to consider local representations. I am sure that my hon. Friend would agree that it would be intolerable for Whitehall to intervene continually and arbitrarily in local decisions. That is, in effect, what he is asking or, rather, what he has now carefully avoided asking should be done in this case by changing his request to one for some sort of inquiry.
Here the South Gloucestershire Area Planning Sub-Committee, with delegated powers from the Gloucestershire County Planning Committee, has given permission for a planning development within its delegated powers. The county planning committee can reserve cases for itself, but here it did not. Any question of interventon by my rght hon. Frend can be considered only if there was evidence of gross error or a serious error coupled with failure to give proper consideration to local representations. Is there the least evidence of either of these things?
Perhaps one should look at the planning situation. This site is shown in the Bristol fringe town map which is coming up for public inquiry in February of next year as part of a shopping site. The time for objections to that fringe town map has already passed, and, as my hon. Friend knows, no objections were made to the zoning of this site as a shopping area. It is a fact that a shopping zone covers a public house. If a public house is not wanted in this area then objections could have been made at that stage. But, of course, whether or not a public house


comes on this site—I take my hon. Friend's point that at the moment it is thought the present owner will sell the site and therefore the future is not known—does not depend on the planning allocation agreed for the site. It depends on whether the licensing justices agree that a public house may go there.
All the planning committee addressed itself to was whether or not the site itself was proper for a public house. If this or another owner seeks to build a public house here, it will be necessary for his application to the licensing justices to be fully advertised and, of course, my hon. Friend's constituents will be able to make their case by argument before the licensing justices. We are not discussing whether or not a public house is to be put here, but whether or not the site is suitable for a public house. I think I have shown therefore that, so far as the development plan is concerned, there is nothing irregular in the suggestion about putting a public house on the site.
Can it be shown that not enough consideration was given, by the South Gloucestershire Area Planning Sub-Committee? By my hon. Friend's own admission he thinks that arguments were listened to. We know that a letter from the Mangotsfield Urban District Council was sent to and received by the sub-committee before it took its decision. We know that in the same way a letter from local residents was sent to and received by the committee. We know that a representative of the Mangotsfield Urban District Council could have been a member of the sub-committee. In fact I think that there are three places on the sub-committee reserved for representatives of the Mangotsfield Urban District Council which is said by my hon. Friend to have opposed this development so strongly.
Not only did it receive representations, therefore, and not only does my hon. Friend agree that the representations were listened to, but we know that a sub-committee of the planning sub-committee did make a site inspection. My hon. Friend made great play with the suggestion that a local planning authority should take care to avoid offending local public opinion, particularly when it has persuaded the immediate local authority. I suggest that that is a very bad doctrine. The duty of a planning authority

is to come to the right conclusion after considering all the evidence, even if that right conclusion is unpopular. It would be a very sad thing if local planning authorities were to think it their duty to give in to considerable pressure, be it local or remote.
There are various ways in which the local planning authority is obliged to heed public opinion. If, for instance, a local planning authority refuses a planning application, as my hon. Friend knows, an appeal may be made to my right hon. Friend and an inquiry then follows where the arguments are fully exposed to Press and public, and therefore, the local planning authority is forced to take them into account. It is true that if a local planning authority approves an application there is no appeal to my right hon. Friend from that approval by local people who object to the approval. It is therefore all the more important that local planning authorities should take particular care that their public relations are such as to make it absolutely plain that justice has been done as well as actually to do justice.
My right hon. Friend has this point very much in mind, and when he sends out a circular which will precede the bringing into force of the Public Bodies (Admission to Meetings) Act, 1960, he will be giving some advice to local planning authorities, including delegated ones, on this point. Here I must repeat to my hon. Friend that there has been no evidence whatsoever of gross error, certainly no evidence of gross error that has any outside significance. There has been no evidence of failure to consider local representations. This is just another case, deeply felt, deeply important, of local people deciding local matters and here I come to the ultimate sanction—which must be in the minds of all the people serving on planning authorities or other local bodies—that is, the sanction of local elections.
My hon. Friend finished his speech by making some very tentative and cautious general remarks suggesting that there might be need for some sort of inquiry into the planning activities in this area. I am sure that he will not be surprised if on the very flimsy arguments he put forward in that part of his speech—I differentiate them strongly from the first


part of his speech which was clearly and carefully argued—I cannot possibly commit my right hon. Friend to any such extraordinary interference with local authority conduct.
I hope that I have not left in my hon. Friend's mind any suggestion that we think this is unimportant to those immediately concerned. I think that they on their side will realise that they would be the first to resent it if Whitehall intruded itself in what really is a local matter and what, therefore, should be left to local decision.

10.9 p.m.

Mr. W. A. Wilkins: I want to say a word or two in support of what the hon. Member for Bristol, North-East (Mr. Hopkins) has said. I happen to know this site very well, for I have travelled over it for forty or fifty years. I agree with him that it is a rather dangerous site.
What troubles the hon. Member and troubles me and other people is the reason why the planning authority could refuse for about three or four years repeated applications for permission to develop this site—as the Parliamentary Secretary has said—for shops, licensed premises and so on, and then suddenly reverse that decision. That is the point we are troubled about, how it comes about and what happened suddenly to make the planning authority override its own previous decisions.
The Minister said, too, that there were no objections by the local residents when they knew of the plan for the shops, and that any plans for shops automatically made provision or allowed for licensed premises. I think there is probably a simple answer to that. Probably, the general public are not aware that when a proposal is made to erect shops, it will automatically include the provision of licensed premises. If I know this

area at all, I should say that there would have been a pretty strong objection in the area had the people there realised that in agreeing to the proposal to build 37 shops, they were also agreeing to the erection of licensed premises, because they have had a spot of bother from time to time from the existing premises.

Sir K. Joseph: I should make it plain that I was not talking about permission being given, but was saying that the zoning in the development plan shows shops, and that covers a public-house. The stage of giving permission is a much later one and is quite separate.

Mr. Wilkins: May I say to the Minister that if there are to be public objections, some provision ought to be made for them.

Sir K. Joseph: Public objections can be made at several points—at the stage of publication of the development plan, and later when the application actually to develop is made.

Mr. Wilkins: I am obliged to the Minister, and I appreciate the point. I understand that they would have to make objections when the proposal for the licence was made. What we are asking the Minister this evening is whether there can be more co-ordination between the planning authorities and the Ministry of Housing and Local Government so that we shall not again have this situation, in which such a long period of time can elapse, and when, not one decision, but three or four previous decisions, can suddenly be changed. There seems to be some weakness there, and I do not know whether that is something to which the Minister ought to give further consideration.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at twelve minutes past Ten o'clock.